drugref.org, the online repository for free, peer reviewed collaborative pharmaceutical reference databases is going online. The goal is to create an independent free database of pharmaceutical information suitable for decision support systems and expert system engines. It is still in draft mode, discussion is invited on related mailing lists.

Key features will be peer review, independence (of anything: languages, health systems, countries, industry, sponsors), and the collaborative effort.

Information entered into the database can be tagged to be valid only for any of a specific country, a specific health system, a specific language, a specific reference model. The user can then select what type of information he wants to access (like all info in English, only if valid in Australia, only if accepted by peer review process already)

All information entered (via web interface or client software) is audited and versioned. A peer review process will then “elevate” information stepwise from “raw” to “reviewed” to “accepted”. End users can decide what level they want to access at any time.

We hope that this way, information will be purified through the peer review process to a degree where it becomes trustworthy for professional daily use.

The data structure has been developed in a way that will make it easy to use the collected data for expert system engines (decision support systems)

Everybody with an interest in such work should please join one of our mailing lists:
devel@drugref.org for those participating in related software development incl. database modelling and
discussion@drugref.org for those interested in participating in a general related discussion.

To subscribe, please point your browser at
http://drugref.org/mailinglist.html

Please note that the web site is just a draft so far, some links still broken, and the online database just a first draft with a few mock data. We hope to get the discussion on our mailing lists productive in order to improve web site and database quickly to a degree where t becomes ready for production.

My special thanks to Ian Haywood who spent a lot of time working on this already, and for implementing the first draft online database.

Merry Christmas to all of you!