About PharmaPaC

PharmaPac presents an interactive multimedia-teaching tool and was developed with focus on problem-oriented learning in clinical pharmacology.

With drug costs rising, the advances in drug development and information technology, and the increased marketing efforts of the pharmaceutical companies, it is imperative that students are exposed to the reasoning process in patient treatment, and that they experience a high level of teaching in clinical pharmacology that is firmly grounded in the adherence to scientific principles and to the concepts of evidence based medicine. Along with the increased knowledge demands students need to become global in their approaches to assessing and treating patients.

To this end we have created a teaching system based on clinical problems, presented as WEB-based interactive patient cases. Each case is linked to several sites, providing additional information about the patient. A list of links useful for pharmacological questions/problems have been selected.

The general aims of the course are:

To increase the rational use of drugs
To understand the concept of individualized pharmacotherapy
To evaluate and anticipate drug interactions and adverse effects

The tool has been used in two joint-run courses in Pharmacology and Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics at Karolinska Institutet and Stanford University during spring of 2001 and 2002.