Multimedia: Electronic DTB, eBNF/eMeReC
Authors: Colin P Bradley
Journal: BMJ (1999)

Available from Consumers’ Association, £65 for single user, £110 for two to five users

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Rating: ★★★ as a book, ★★ as an electronic information source

Electronic publication opens up all sorts of possibilities not previously available. As well as allowing vast amounts of text, pictures, sounds, and video to be stored on relatively small, portable, and durable disks, it also allows the information to be swiftly accessed with electronic linking techniques such as hypertext and sophisticated electronic indexing. All these facilities are seen on the world wide web, which is rapidly becoming the epitome of electronic information provision. Standards now emerging for the assessment of websites are equally applicable to other electronic information sources such as CD Roms.

Viewed as a virtual website, how does this CD fare? On the upside, it contains three highly regarded independent sources of drug information that, in their paper formats, have rightly become stalwarts for prescribers. They provide, by and large, accurate, dependable, and authoritative information about prescribing in readily accessible formats. The electronic version also provides excellent facilities for searching and cross referencing. You can search the indexes of the British National Formulary and Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin in a manner akin to using of an ordinary book index for any word, part of a word, or combination of words anywhere on the disk. A special contents searching facility locates information in the context of the specific publication from which it has come. There is also a special facility to search for interactions, although these are also flagged up (literally with a little flag-like icon) with drug details from the British National Formulary when drug names are searched for.

However, the way the information is presented in this electronic publication still owes far too much to its paper predecessors. The chapters of the British National Formulary and the individual issues of the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin and MeReC Bulletin are still presented in linear succession like a book. There are electronic links to relevant sections of the British National Formulary from the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin and MeReC Bulletin (but not vice versa), but there is no integration of the information from the three different sources. The user interface is idiosyncratic and requires an investment in learning how the browser software works. In future, I suspect, all browser software for CDs will need to look and feel like a web browser to allow users to transfer their web browsing skills. Furthermore, CDs and other electronic media will increasingly be required, as are high quality websites, to be “user centred” and “web oriented.”

To achieve this, this CD would have to have its information content substantially rearranged to match more closely when and how users really access drug information. To be web oriented would require a complete redesign of the user interface and the inclusion of hyperlinks to the web. The next challenge for the publishers of this CD will be to weave their information into a better virtual website.