Point of Care Tools

There is increasing access to and availability of point of care (POC) tools by Medicines Information Centres.

A POC tool refers to an evidence-based database used to help diagnose or inform about specific clinical conditions. This can include diagnostic and treatment pathways. Examples include DynaMed Plus®, UpToDate®, ClinicalKey®, and BMJ Best Practice, but this list is not exhaustive.

The POC tool is usually purchased and approved for use at a national, organisational, or Trust level, rather than being purchased by an individual Medicines Information Centre and therefore is a resource which the centre may have incidental access to. For this reason it does not fulfil the criteria for being officially resource assessed by the UKMi Quality and Risk Management Group (QRMG) for inclusion on the Essential Resource List since it is neither purchased by the Medicines Information Centre, nor is it a resource which can be accessed free of charge without some form of subscription.

However, it is acknowledged that since Medicines Information Centres may have access to these resources, general guidance on their use would be helpful. If access is available, the resource can be used, although the following points must be taken into consideration:

• Use in context, and in conjunction with, other QRMG recommended resources.
• Although these resources are evidence based, content may also be supplemented by clinician/expert opinion.
• As with any tertiary resource, the full evidence base may not always be represented. 
• They may not represent UK clinical practice. In such cases, consideration needs to be given to UK treatment pathways, guidelines, drug names, and dosing.
• Drug content can be driven by other resources. For example, DynaMed Plus® contains drug content provided by Micromedex®; UpToDate® contains drug content provided by Lexicomp. However, this represents a subset of the Micromedex®/Lexicomp data only and therefore PoC tools cannot be used as a replacement for accessing Micromedex/Lexicomp.
• These resources have not been assessed by the QRMG, but consider assessing for your own local practice, using the Resource Assessment Tool.
• In many cases access is available via Trust Libraries, who may also provide training on use of such resources