� Online Internet shopping today offers many benefits. You privy research a product in the privateness of your own nursing home and purchase most anything by clicking a black eye. But should we be allowed to buy prescription drugs via the Internet, bypassing a traditional spot visit or conversation with a physician? In the August event of Mayo Clinic Proceedings, researchers from Utah and several colleagues compare the relative rubber of two systems -- an on-line prescribing service versus traditional physician consultation -- for patients seeking medication to treat erectile dysfunction.
Online prescribing, likewise called e-medicine prescribing, is relatively new in the United States. Patient demand for these services appears to be growing, merely the researchers acknowledge that the health care industriousness "has fitly raised serious concerns about the safety of prescribing over the Internet." In 2002, the state of Utah sign a contract with an Internet prescribing service to prescribe erectile dysfunction drugs called PDE-5 inhibitors. Erectile dysfunction (ED) is the inability of a piece to maintain a fast erection long enough to have gender.
The researchers randomly selected 1,000 patient medical records from patients quest ED intervention from Jan. 1, 2001 to Dec. 31, 2005. Half (five hundred) of these patients secondhand the on-line prescriber (the e-medicine grouping), and 500 consulted a physician (the traditional medicine group) for treatment.
Using statistical analyses, the researchers compared the safety of both approaches -- e-medicine versus traditional medicine -- in treating patients wHO have ED. The safety comparisons looked at a number of criteria, including prescription appropriateness, how often the prescribers used a diagnostic tool called the International Index of Erectile Questions (IIEQs) and the level of patient education provided by prescribers.
Evaluating both systems for these safety criteria, the researchers concluded that the e-medicine system "outperformed the traditional system in most of the safety variables tested." One area the e-medicine system appeared to stand out was patient role education. The authors noted that hundred percent of the e-medicine clients standard written maker product data, and 75.2 per centum of e-medicine clients standard tailored electronic messages. In comparison, study data showed that no medication instructions were recorded for 51.8 per centum of patients who received prescriptions via a traditional physician interview.
"Innovation, engineering and stream medical practice all broker into the outcome of this study," note the authors. "Application of an expert interview system specifically targeted to erectile disfunction along with a continuous platform for patient client-physician communications throw this fussy Internet system comparable to traditional medical practice."
The researchers recognize that additional research is needed to confirm these results. They also recommend that state of matter regulatory agencies "consider using the regulative model of oversight protections implemented by the province of Utah to licence Internet prescribing companies."
Authors include: Mark Munger, Pharm.D., and Gregory Stoddard, from the University of Utah - Salt Lake City; Allen Wenner, M.D., West Columbia's Doctor Family Medicine, Lexington, SC; John Bachman, M.D., Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; John Jurige, M.D., University of Louisville in Kentucky; and Laura Poe and Diana Baker, Utah State Division of Occupational and Professional Licensing, Salt Lake City.
A referee journal, Mayo Clinic Proceedings publishes original articles and reviews transaction with clinical and laboratory medicine, clinical research, basic science research and clinical epidemiology. Mayo Clinic Proceedings is published monthly by Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research as part of its dedication to the medical education of physicians. The journal has been published for more than 80 days and has a circulation of cxxx,000 nationally and internationally. Articles are available on-line at hypertext transfer protocol://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com.
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