MedInfoSys®: Reference Material

Medical Information Officers typically need to draw on a large number of reference sources to respond quickly and accurately to enquiries:

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), for more simple enquiries that can be answered over the telephone
• Standard Letters, i.e. standard answers on a given topic or question, typically used as a core part of the correspondence sent to an enquirer
• Supporting material, which might accompany correspondence to an enquirer:
  • Papers and product information
  • Bibliographic/abstracts with references
  • SmPCs, PILs

As a minimum, MedInfoSys® becomes the repository for FAQs and Standard Letters; depending on the numbers of records involved, our data migration process may well be the best way of populating the system with these.  It can also house supporting materials, or be used as an “index” of these records in whatever other systems they might more naturally live within – it completely depends on how each customer wants to work.

In managing reference materials, MedInfoSys® provides the following functionality:

• Careful indexing under configurable categories so that multiple sources can be quickly searched and accessed when responding to an enquiry
• Rigorous versioning controls to restrict who can change documents, and when, with notifications of when changes are due and when changes are made
• If the option is enabled, a formal review and approve process must be followed before new or changed documents are “published” for use in the system
• Whilst only the latest version of a document can be used, archived versions remain associated with where they were used, to maintain data integrity (which is crucial for auditing purposes)
• Reports can also be generated on the usage of reference material