Pharmacokinetic software for the health sciences - Choosing the right package for teaching purposes

Computer assisted learning has an important role in the teaching of pharmac okinetics to health sciences students because it transfers the emphasis fro m the purely mathematical domain to an 'experiential' domain in which graph ical and symbolic representations of actions and their consequences form th e major focus for learning. Basic pharmacokinetic concepts can be taught by experimenting with the interplay between dose and dosage interval with dru g absorption (e.g. absorption rate, bioavailability), drug distribution (e. g. volume of distribution, protein binding) and drug elimination (e.g. clea rance) on drug concentrations using library ('canned') pharmacokinetic mode ls. Such 'what if' approaches are found in calculator-simulators such as Pharma Calc, Practical Pharmacokinetics and PK Solutions. Others such as SAAM II, ModelMaker, and Stella represent the 'systems dynamics' genre, which requir es the user to conceptualise a problem and formulate the model on-screen us ing symbols, icons, and directional arrows. The choice of software should be determined by the aims of the subject/cour se, the experience and background of the students in pharmacokinetics, and institutional factors including price and networking capabilities of the pa ckage(s). Enhanced learning may result if the computer teaching of pharmaco kinetics is supported by tutorials, especially where the techniques are app lied to solving problems in which the link with healthcare practices is cle arly established.