SPCs seen as low value

摘要

SUMMARIES of product characteristics contribute little to the safe and effective use of medicines in practice, according to a new study published in Therapeutic Innovation & Regulatory Science last month. Researchers asked 30 GPs to test the summary of product characteristics (SPC) for the antimalarial Lariam to understand how effectively it communicated essential information to pre-scribers. In addition, 20 senior hospital doctors user tested the SPC for CellCept, an immunosuppressant. Performance-based testing was used to establish whether the clinicians could find and understand key points of information, as well as gathering general feedback.