Pharmacy Toolbox – an important tool for health care workers
Authors: Andreas Wiegand (Apotheker Helfen e.V.), Dr. Beate Lettmeier, Dr. Sieglinde Mauder (Medmissio-Institute for Global Health)
Many health workers in developing countries lack adequate pharmaceutical and medical education. Pharmaceutical or medical literature in the form of books or electronic sources is often not available due to financial aspects or unstable internet access. Therefore, a medical open-source library called MEDBOX-The Aid Library, an independent medical and pharmaceutical online library of the German “medmissio – Institute for Global Health (formerly: Medical Mission Institute)” in collaboration with international agencies and scientific institutions, was founded, to summarize serious and helpful sources from the mass of data available online and thus to facilitate the application for the user on the one hand and to provide standards on the other.
Pharmacy Toolbox
The Pharmacy Toolbox is part of MEDBOX and was developed with the collaboration of Apotheker Helfen e.V. It is available online at www.pharmacybox.org and contains comprehensive knowledge to provide its users with up-to-date pharmaceutical information. This toolbox is easily accessible and is also functioning in responsive design. It is also suitable for tablets, smartphones, and computer screens. Furthermore, the use of the database is free of charge, and therefore health care and humanitarian workers worldwide have access to relevant medical and pharmaceutical information. The user languages are English, German, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic. The documents available are mostly in English but also in French, German and Spanish. It covers basic documents on (Essential) Medicines, Rational Use, Model Formulary, Falsified & Substandard, Quality Assurance, Pharmacy Management, SOPs, Traditional & Herbal Medicine and Capacity Building. The health workers prescribing, handling or dispensing medicines can find herewith a comprehensive online knowledge database. Moreover, there is also a wide range of other tools available, such as the AMR Toolbox, which contains information/documents on antimicrobial resistance (also country-specific).
The work on this project is still in progress. Of course, more time and money need to be invested to expand the data collection and coverage