Drug-Safety Help Available

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently asked APA to help encourage APA members to use electronic tools provided by the agency to access important safety information on medications and products. These electronic access tools include MedWatch list-serve notifications disseminated by e-mail or RSS news feeds, the MedWatch Web site, and audio broadcasts (podcasts) than can be downloaded from the FDA's Web site.

In a letter to James H. Scully Jr., M.D., medical director and CEO of APA; Janet Woodcock, M.D., deputy commissioner and chief medical officer of the FDA, asked APA to “help get the word out” about the various electronic communication methods the agency uses to disseminate safety alerts and information. As a part of the agency's patient safety effort, the FDA believes it is critical to work with health care organizations such as APA to communicate risk information “in a timely, targeted, and secure manner” to physicians as well as patients and supports electronic communication of safety information on medical products, “whether by industry or by the FDA.”

Suggestions, comments, and requests for additional information about the FDA's electronic communication methods to reach health care professionals can be sent to Norman Marks at<[email protected]> or (301) 827-1512.

The FDA online resources can be accessed through its homepage at<www.fda.gov> and the MedWatch section at<www.fda.gov/medwatch/index.html>, and updated prescription drug labels are available through the National Library of Medicine's Web site at<http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov>.