Preparation of Motion Pictures to Visualize the Geographical Propagation Pattern of Influenza Infection Using Pharmacy Big Data / 医薬品情報学

<b>Objective: </b>The aim of this study was to propose a method for preparing motion pictures to visualize the geometrical propagation of influenza infection.  The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) of Japan, which has a population of 43 million, was considered as a typical epidemic area for the 2012/2013 flu season.  Therefore, we collected data regarding the daily variations in the number of flu patients from 285 pharmacies located in the Kanto region during that time period.<br><b>Design and Methods: </b>To visualize the information mined from these big data, a motion picture consisting of 90 frames ranging from December 12, 2012 to March 21, 2013 was created.  Each frame depicted the daily image of infection as a circle centered at the pharmacy location on the background map, and its radius was proportioned to patient number.  The time variations of the flu patients at the pharmacies appeared to be noisy, which would cause the flickering on a display screen.  We adopted data smoothing and a model time series of the Gaussian distribution curve to circumvent the above problem.<br><b>Result: </b>The created motion picture indicated that the 2012/2013 flu season began near the central part of Toyo in December, 2012, spread towards the suburbs, and ended in March, 2013.<br><b>Conclusion: </b>The method proposed in this study can be considered an efficient and intuitive way to communicate essential epidemiological information.

Perception of Physicians, Pharmacists and Pharmaceutical Industries about Information in Package Inserts in Japan / 医薬品情報学

<b>Objective: </b>A perception survey of healthcare providers and pharmaceutical industries about the current package insert (PI) was conducted to evaluate whether its layout and issues such as the contents concerning drug-drug interactions are found appropriate.<br><b>Methods: </b>A questionnaire was sent via the Internet to physicians of various subspecialties, or via the postal service to pharmacy-employed pharmacists and pharmaceutical industries.  It consisted of questions regarding the PI layout, the information contents on drug-drug interactions and other matters about PI revision.<br><b>Results: </b>The survey showed that the PI is a major source of drug information for physicians (82.4%) and pharmacists (98.7%).  The layout (order of appearance of headings and information about drug interactions in a tabular format) of the current PI is widely accepted by physicians, pharmacists, and pharmaceutical industries.  There was, however, some degree of disagreement within these three groups in the perceptions about the presentation/contents of the several drug interactions, as well as about the timing for its updating.  Around 24% of physicians and 35% of pharmacists view that the content of drug interactions is insufficient, and that information about adverse drug reactions and drug interactions is not enough updated in the PIs.  On the other hand, near 86% of pharmaceutical industries were prone to wait for accumulation of enough data until revising the information in PIs.<br><b>Conclusions: </b>Differences of perception were found between healthcare providers (<i>i.e</i>., PI users) and industries.  Our survey revealed that the basic layout of the current PI should be preserved, but there are issues such as the contents and updating of information regarding drug interactions and adverse drug interactions that may require modifications according to the healthcare providers’ point of view.

The ideal focus of the study in the drug information sciences / 医薬品情報学

  In 2008, Japanese Society of Drug Informatics (JASDI) organized the Future Vision Committee (the Committee) to propose the essential focus of drug informatics.  To explore a future vision about the drug information sciences, it was necessary to collect a variety of opinions widely from researchers.  Therefore, at the 11^th annual meeting of JASDI in July 5-6, 2008, the Committee convened a workshop to extract problems in the researches of drug informatics by using KJ method and evaluated the contents.  The major problems raised were “the field of drug informatics is too broad” and “there is no definition and/or no system of the drug informatics”.  Related problems raised are the shortness of the history and lack of originality in the study.  From different viewpoints, it was also pointed out that the methodology of the research is not well established and no systematic education is provided.  Taken together, major problems in drug informatics are concluded to be the lack of definition and the lack of systematizations, and will be solved to a certain extent by defining the outcome of the researches in drug informatics.