About eMC Medicine Guides

What is eMC Medicine Guides?
How are Medicine Guides created?
Who governs eMC Medicine Guides?
How is eMC Medicine Guides funded?
Who owns the eMC Medicine Guides website?
What is the information standard?

What is eMC Medicine Guides?

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eMC Medicine Guides is a online medicines information website for medicine users, their carers and the general public in the UK. It gives up to date, reliable and understandable information about medicines to help you to:

Make informed decisions about your health and health care
Be more involved in decisions about your treatment, in partnership with your healthcare professionals
Understand how best to use and take your medicine

Information about medicines on the eMC Medicine Guides website links to information about conditions on the NHS Choices website. NHS Choices is the NHS' online portal for patients and the general public.

How are Medicine Guides created?

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The eMC Medicine Guides website contains Medicine Guides for medicines prescribed in the UK.

An independent team of pharmacists writes each Medicine Guide from the information contained in a medicine's Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC). This is a document which is checked and approved by the UK or European government agencies which license medicines. These agencies are the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

SPCs are written using medical terms. The authors write each Medicine Guides in language which is useful for and understandable to people. This is done using a set of guidelines which has been approved by the Board that governs the eMC Medicine Guides resource. This Board is called the Medicines Information for People Board.

This process ensures that the eMC Medicine Guides website is independent, unbiased and non promotional.

The photographs of medicines displayed on this website are all provided by TICTAC, the UK's leading drug identification database. Images of each medicine and device are provided to TICTAC by the pharmaceutical company that manufactures that medicine.

Who governs eMC Medicine Guides?

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The Medicines Information for People Board is a unique collaboration of groups with a shared vision to provide good quality, reliable medicines information for medicine users, their carers and the general public in the UK. The Board, which includes members from the Department of Health, the NHS, the pharmaceutical industry regulator, the pharmaceutical industry, and professional and voluntary health organisations, is responsible for overseeing the development of the eMC Medicine Guides website.

The Medicines Information for People Board includes members from:

Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI)
Datapharm
Department of Health
Faculty of Pharmaceutical Medicine (of the Royal College of Physicians)
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA)
NHS Choices
NHS Direct
Parkinson's Disease Society
Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB)
Royal College of Nursing (RCN)
Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB)
UK Medicines Information (UKMi)
University of Leeds

How is eMC Medicine Guides funded?

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Individual Medicine Guides are searchable by both brand and generic name. If a Medicine Guide uses the brand name, this means that the pharmaceutical company has paid for that Medicine Guide to be created.

Where a Medicine Guide uses the generic name, there is no pharmaceutical company directly involved in funding that Guide. A generic Medicine Guide is as accurate and as high quality as a branded Guide.

The following companies support eMC Medicine Guides:

Abbott Laboratories Limited
Actelion Pharmaceuticals UK
Allen & Hanburys (GlaxoSmithKline UK)
Amgen Ltd
AstraZeneca
Boehringer Ingelheim Ltd
Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceuticals
Celgene
Discovery Pharmaceuticals
Eisai Ltd
Eli Lilly & Company Ltd
Exelgyn Laboratories
Gilead Sciences
GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare (GlaxoSmithKline UK)
GlaxoSmithKline
Ipsen Ltd
Janssen-Cilag Ltd
LEO Laboratories Ltd
Lipomed GmbH
Merck Sharp & Dohme Ltd
Movetis Ltd
MSD-SP Ltd (Merck Sharp & Dohme Limited)
Norgine Ltd
Novartis Consumer Health
Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd
Novartis Vaccines (Novartis Pharmaceuticals UK Ltd)
Novo Nordisk Ltd
Organon Laboratories Ltd
Orion Pharma (UK) Ltd
Pfizer Ltd
Pharmacia Ltd (Pfizer Limited)
Pierre Fabre Ltd
Profile Pharma Ltd
ProStrakan
Recordati Pharmaceuticals Ltd
Roche Products Ltd
Takeda UK Ltd
Wyeth Pharmaceuticals

If you are a pharmaceutical company and would like to find out more about how you can get involved, please contact us

Who owns the eMC Medicine Guides website?

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The eMC Medicine Guides website is managed and owned by Datapharm Communications Limited, known as Datapharm.

Datapharm is an independent, not-for-profit company that works with the NHS, pharmaceutical companies, and other healthcare organisations to provide high quality information about medicines (more about Datapharm).

What does the Information Standard mark mean?

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Datapharm, the publishers of eMC Medicine Guides, is one of 36 founding members of the Information Standard. The Information Standard is the Department of Health's new certification scheme for health and social care information producers.

The Information Standard ensures that you have access to reliable health and social care information; enabling you to make confident and informed decisions about your care and treatment. The Information Standard Mark on websites and leaflets shows that the information has come from a trustworthy source.

As a founding member of the scheme, Datapharm complies with the standards set out by the Department of Health; publishing information that is accessible, accurate, appropriately researched, authoritative, clear, complete, readable, relevant, secure, up-to-date and well-designed.

The Information Standard can help you to: