By Victoria ColliverMarch 27, 2008
Doctors will be able to get e-mail alerts about drug warnings and label changes through a new online network operated by a San Francisco company that started this week.
Medem Inc., an online patient-doctor communication service founded in 1999 by the American Medical Association, is supporting the Health Care Notification Network, a service designed to improve on receiving time-sensitive alerts on paper via U.S. mail.
"Relying on paper-based U.S. mail and weeks of delay to deliver time-urgent patient safety alerts to doctors in 2008 is indefensible and unsafe," said Dr. Nancy Dickey, former AMA president and chair of the iHealth Alliance, a nonprofit board that governs the Health Care Notification Network.
The new system was encouraged by the Food and Drug Administration, which wanted to improve the speed of drug safety alerts, said Edward Fotsch, Medem's chief executive officer.
The network is free to physicians and funded by the FDA and drug and device manufacturers that use the new online network and currently pay for U.S. mail delivery of paper-based alerts. Physicians can enroll at www.hcnn.net.