On-line Medication Resources

* Drugs.com is a new Internet drug information resource. You have to register, but it's free. Drugs.com gets its main database and Care Guide information from Micromedex, a part of the global Thomson Health Care Information group. The Drug Interactions information comes from Multum Information Services, a company that specializes in solutions to the growing problem of adverse drug events. A pharmacist at Drugs.com tells me that the site contains about 24,000 drug names. It unfortunately has an interface that makes entering more than a few items tedious. The URL is
http://www.drugs.com/

* Drugstore.com has an excellent and easy-to-use drug interaction tool, albeit one that is hard to find. The URL is Drug Interactions

* The Express Scripts “Check Interactions” site is http://www.drugdigest.org/DD/Interaction/ChooseDrugs/1,4109,,00.html.

* Another drug interaction site is Discovery Health’s “Drug Interaction Checker.” The URL of this tool is http://health.discovery.com/encyclopedias/checker/checker.jsp.

* The Diabetes Monitor: Medications has many links to Web sites about diabetes medications. The URL is
http://www.diabetesmonitor.com/other-05.htm

* RxList - The Internet Drug Index is a free, searchable database of more than 4,500 prescription and over-the-counter medications. The search engine uses fuzzy logic, so you can often find a drug even when you misspell its name. The URL is
http://www.rxlist.com/

* Healthtouch® Drug Information enables you to find information about more than 10,000 prescription and over-the-counter medications. You can enter either the generic or brand name of the drug, but you have to spell it correctly. While it includes more drugs than RxList, the information it provides is less detailed. The URL is
http://www.healthtouch.com/level1/p_dri.htm

* Johns Hopkins IntelliHealth lets you search its U. S. Pharmacopeia database for drug information. The URL is
http://www.intelihealth.com/email/drugs