What is Academic Detailing?:

It is a new approach to actively provide physicians with face-to-face comparative information on drugs based on fair and neutral clinical and basic evidence that is not commerce-based. It is a new approach in which pharmacists actively provide physicians with face-to-face comparative information on drugs based on fair and neutral clinical and basic evidence. With the introduction of the six-year pharmacist training program, clinical knowledge and field training have been enhanced, but it is expected to fill the practice gap for pharmacists in actually influencing physician prescribing.

Development of a pharmaceutical comparison system:

We are building a drug database from the scientific perspective of pharmacological characteristics, which is necessary for pharmacists to select drugs (Fig. 1).

Fig.1  Eight essential fields of the division.

Academic Detailing Materials Development:

As shown in Fig. 2, with the cooperation of a wide range of lecturers.We are developing materials that not only provide clinical evidence, but also differentiate the basic pharmaceutical properties of drugs.

Figure 2.　An all-pharmacist approach Academic Detailing Materials Development
※ Quotes modified from U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs 2019: Academic Detailing Educational Catalog

Academic Detailer Training

The mission of an academic detailer is “to influence the prescribing behavior of physicians and optimize their prescriptions. The selection of the most appropriate drug for a patient after thorough consideration from each physician’s and pharmacist’s professional point of view (Fig. 3) leads above all to the improvement of the quality of drug treatment.the improvement of the quality of drug treatment.

Fig.3 Differences in the perspectives of physicians and pharmacists

Establishment of The Japan Academic Detailing Study Group

We will establish The Japan Academic Detailing Study Group to enrich the drug comparison system developed based on the information in the package inserts with pharmacokinetic data, which is the key to distinguishing the usage of drugs. This system will be used as a database to support academic detailing through industry-academia-government collaboration.

Figure 4. Establishment of The Japan Academic Detailing Study Group

Future Development Goals

We will further expand the disease areas to include diabetes and supportive care for cancer patients, and aim to create a Japan where pharmacists can practice academic detailing.

Message

The optimal drug therapy for a patient starts with the physician selecting the optimal drug class. The pharmacist then selects the most appropriate drug based on its chemical properties, pharmacodynamics, pharmacokinetic properties, and patient background. The pharmacist and the physician can optimize the drug therapy by thoroughly discussing it from their respective professional perspectives.