DEVELOPING A CANADIAN PRESCRIBING PRACTICES NETWORK

Expenditure on drug therapy in Canada has been growing at a faster rat e than spending on any other aspect of health care. Increasing societa l pressure to use scarce resource more efficiently, advances in commun ication technology and data indicating that there is room for improvem ent in drug prescribing suggest that the time has come for an organize d linkage of the available drug-utilization and health-outcomes data-b ases across the country. A national prescribing practices network woul d assist prescribers, researchers and policymakers to optimize prescri bing with respect to both cost effectiveness and health outcomes. The authors outline the main concerns addressed in the 1994 report of the National Pharmaceutical Strategy and present the results of discussion s by the Canadian Prescribing Practices Network Project with respect t o the potential users and data sources of a national network and the c ommunications technology on which it would rely.