Information Society in Pharmaceuticals (Pharmaceuticals Policy and Law, 4)

Organizations contemplate information technology and the Internet as a unique opportunity to enhance knowledge work and to improve quality of service. Electronic regulatory reporting, electronic document archival and data retrieval, automatic transactions between collaborative enterprise resources, wide availability and dissemination of information to the public; these are a few of the facets enabled by the information society and the digital revolution. Pharmaceutical agencies and companies have long ago realized that streamlined procedures and efficient co-operation achievable through strategic use of information and communication technologies contribute to raise the competitive basis of companies and to improve provision of health care to citizens at large. Intense activity is taking place individually and within international fora to profit from the opportunities offered by the new methods of doing public administration, business and commerce. The technical, financial and organizational effort to incorporate the new technologies into existing procedures and work methods is enormous. The benefits are proportional and some are already apparent. The next step is to think about "how to take every piece of paper and push it out so that constituents can do these things electronically". To achieve this, it is useful that governments and industry agree and publish common objectives, milestones and plans for the use of information and communication technologies in every regulatory area. In addition to change the way of doing regulatory business processes, the Internet will also affect distribution and commercialisation of medicinal products.