Grant: Operating Grant: Spread and Scale of Existing CBPHC and eHealth Innovations

Canada lacks a national approach to the establishment of medication guidelines for use in children, and lags significantly behind others countries like the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and New Zealand - all of whom have established and invested in online, national infrastructures to provide evidence-based drug information for children. National resources provide evidence-based, unbiased, up-to-date, transparent, peer-reviewed information including age- and weight-based dosing for children alongside potential formulation considerations (e.g., compounding) and links to formulation recipes. Previous work by an international group of formulary leaders identified an extremely comprehensive list of 116 items to be included in a paediatric drug monograph (drug information sheet). This exhaustive list highlights the need for a standard approach to evidence curation. Currently, this technology-based health innovation has been successfully implemented is the Netherlands, where a group of pharmacists, paediatricians, clinical pharmacologists, general practitioners and community pharmacists developed the Kinderformularium in 2006. The Kinderformularium is a well-established, freely available and publicly accessible online paediatric drug resource. It contains evidence-based drug specific information developed from a review of product labels, clinical findings, daily practice and cultural differences and curated by a pharmacist. It is also the only national resource that is transparent in the evidence used to develop the information, by including the full reference list for each listed drug. This operating grant will evaluate the feasibility of spreading and scaling an existing e-health innovation (Kinderformularium) to Canada in the form of a National Paediatric Drug Resource (NPDR) though the development of a Stakeholder Advisory Board and an in-person workshop.