Medi-Span® FAQs
Who is Medi-Span®?
Medi-Span® is the leading provider of drug information for thousands of health
care professionals world wide. With more than 30 years experience, Medi-Span®
continues to offer authoritative drug databases in a variety of formats, including
clinical decision support and disease suite modules, application programming interfaces
and stand-alone software applications. In conjunction with superior implementation
and experienced customer support, the Medi-Span® product line is the perfect
choice for those needed accurate, trusted, drug data that easily integrates into
existing software applications.
What types of drug information does Medi-Span® provide?
Medi-Span® provides data to power the following types of clinical processes:
-
Comprehensive Drug Files providing drug data for medication prescribing, profiling
and more
- Supplemental files provide access to AHFS, HCPCS, and more.
- State Formulary Files
- Drug Interaction Screening
- Drug Allergy Screening
- Drug Dose Screening (basic and advanced)
- Drug Dose Recommendation
- Duplicate of therapy Screening
- Contraindication Screening
- Drug to Lab Conflict Screening
- Patient Monitoring recommendations
- Patient Drug Information
- Drug Images and Imprints
-
Lexicons to Cross-Reference to Industry standard terminologies such as ICD-9, SNOMED,
and RxNorm
- IV Compatibility Checking
- Adverse Drug Effect Screening
- Drug Indication information
- Drug Facts and Comparisons monographs
How is this content created and maintained?
The Medi-Span® internal database is updated every day to include the latest
additions and changes being reported by the FDA, pharmaceutical manufacturers as
well as the latest research articles being published.
How often is the content provided to customers in updates?
A number of production delivery frequencies are available to meet our customer’s
specific needs. Our drug file and pricing information is available daily and our
clinical information is shipped weekly, monthly and quarterly.
How are updates delivered to me?
Via CD mailed to you, FTP (File Transfer Protocol – we can either "push"
the information to them or the customer can "pull" it from us) and web
delivery.
What type of support or tools are available to help me implement these databases
into my system.
Each customer is assigned a dedicated implementation support consultant to assist
them through the implementation process. We provide comprehensive technical documentation
manuals for each product as well.
In addition, we offer Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to support the implementation
of several of our products. These APIs streamline the implementation process and
get your application up and running faster saving you money.
Our current APIs include:
-
Drug Information Bridge™ API – provides a tool for implementing the
following products:
- Drug File Data
- Drug Therapy Monitoring System™ (DTMS) v2.1 (interactions & allergy screening)
- Duplicate Therapy Database™
- Precautions Database™ (Contraindication Screening)
-
Drug Dosing & Administration Database™ (patient specific dose screening)
- Drug Indications Database™
- Adverse Drug Effects Database™
- Warning Label Database™
- Medical Conditions Master Database™
- Drug Image and Imprint™ API – provides a tool for implementing:
- Drug Image Database
- Drug Imprint Database
- Integrated MedFacts Module™ API – provides a tool for implementing:
-
Integrated MedFacts Module (patient drug information leaflets)
- Integrated Drug Facts and Comparisons™ API – provides a tool for implementing:
- Drug Facts and Comparisons Monograph content
- Trissel’s IV-Chek™ API v3.1 – provides a tool for implementing:
Do all Medi-Span® Products require the use of a Medi-Span® drug file product
or can they be used with any drug file?
With the exception of the following list, most products do require the use of a
Medi-Span® drug file.
- Drug Image Database
- Drug Imprint Database
- Image and Imprint API
- Integrated MedFacts Module
- Integrated MedFacts Module API
- Integrated Drug Facts and Comparisons
- Trissel’s IV-Chek™ API v3.1
What technology requirements do I need to be aware of in order to use any of the
Application Programming Interfaces?
- Our APIs allow several deployment options:
-
The software itself is available in both Microsoft .NET (versions 1.1 and 2.0) and
Java editions
-
Many relational Database platforms are supported: including: Oracle; SQL Server;
MySQL; and DB2.
-
Supported operating systems include Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP,
and Red Hat Linux
Are load scripts and update utilities available to maintain the data sets?
Load Scripts and Update Utility tools are provided for our APIs but are not available
for our raw data products. Implementation can provide necessary support if difficulties
loading data into your desired database platform arise.
How is Medi-Span® data purchased?
Medi-Span® data sets are licensed as a subscription and are priced according
to the application and usages of the data. In most cases a base fee and additional
user fees will apply. Your Sales Representative will lead you through this process.
Discounts are available for multiple product purchases (bundles).
What do you mean when you say your embedded data is “Editorially Consistent”
with your referential content?
The Medi-Span® embedded product offerings are maintained in editorial parity
with the content produced by our sister company Facts & Comparisons®. Therefore,
when Medi-Span® data is powering the clinical system and a Fact & Comparisons®
product is consulted for information, conflicting information will not be found.
Our editorial staff for the Medi-Span® line and for the Facts & Comparisons®
line work closely to ensure all information is consistent for our customers. No
other content provider can off you both and promise you content consistency.