|
National Medicines Use Survey (NMUS) |
|
Name
(Abbreviation) |
National Medicines Use Survey
(NMUS) |
|
Established since:
|
2004 |
|
Contact person: |
Dr Lian Lu Ming (NMUS Data Manager)
Sister Lee Kim Tin (Survey Coordinator) |
|
Address: |
3rd Floor, MMA House
124, Jalan Pahang
50286 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia |
|
Phone: |
(603) 4043 9300/ 4043 9400 |
|
Fax: |
(603) 4043 9500 |
|
Email: |
nmus@crc.gov.my |
|
URL: |
http://www.crc.gov.my/nmus |
|
Sponsor, Funding
and Governance: |
|
Sponsor: |
Pharmaceutical Services Division of the
Ministry of Health (MOH) and the Clinical Research Centre, Kuala
Lumpur Hospital MOH |
|
Funding: |
The NMUS is funded out of sponsors’
operating budget and in part by MRG grants from the MOH.
The CRC of the MOH also provided technical support in the form of
clinical epidemiology expertise, and biostatistical and ICT
services. |
|
Governance Board: |
A Governance Board established to govern
the NMUS.
All major groups involved in pharmaceutical issues in Malaysia
such as the MOH, Universities, professional bodies, private
healthcare providers and the pharmaceutical industry are
represented on this board to ensure that the NMUS stay focus on
its objectives, and to assure its continuing relevance and
justification. |
|
Objectives: |
The broad objective of the NMUS is to
quantify the present state and time trends of medicines
utilization at various level of our health care system, whether
national, regional, local or institutional. These data have
several applications including to:
-
Estimate
the number of medicine users overall, by age, sex and geography and
over time
-
Estimate
on the basis of known disease epidemiology to what extent medicines
are under or over-used.
-
Describe
pattern of medicines use through assessing which alternative drugs
are being used for particular conditions and to what extent.
-
Relate the
number of adverse drug reactions reported to our pharmacovigilance
system to the number of people exposed to the drug in order to
assess the magnitude of the problem, or to estimate the degree of
under-reporting of adverse events
-
To provide
a crude estimate of disease prevalence based on its prescription
rate.
-
Estimate
expenditure on pharmaceutical, which constitutes a significant
proportion of our healthcare expenditure.
-
Monitor
and evaluate the effects of interventions to improve the use of
medicines. These interventions may be educational effort,
promotional campaign, formulary restriction, medicines reimbursement
scheme or regulatory measures.
|
|
Scope
and Content: |
The NMUS is intended to be a truly national
survey. It therefore seek access to data on medicines from all
sectors (both public and private) and undertake surveys at the
various levels of the medicines supply and distribution chain in
the country, which includes:
-
Domestic sales data from local pharmaceutical
companies
-
Public and private hospitals’ medicines
procurement data
-
Public and private medical practices’
medicines procurement and prescription
-
Private pharmacies’ procurement and
dispensing
-
And in future, household survey on medicines
consumption
|
|
Data
collection and transfer: |
The surveys conducted by NMUS collected
data either by
-
Download
from existing databases, such as the medicines import and
procurement databases
-
Primary
data collection for prescription and dispensing surveys
Given the trend, NMUS will in the near
future move towards the use electronic data capture (EDC) method
via the internet in conducting its various surveys |
|
Record linkage: |
Not applicable |
|
Reports & Publications: |
The NMUS has publised two reports. The most
recent being Malaysian Statistics On Medicines 2005. Malaysian
Statistics On Medicines 2006 is in progress. Visit NMUS’s
website to download these reports. |
|
Resources: |
|
|
Survey operations: |
The day-to-day operations of the NMUS are
undertaken by dedicated staff, which comprises a full-time
registry manager and 4 full-time assistants. They work from a
purpose-designed office. |
|
Epidemiology: |
The Clinical Research Centre of the MOH
provided pharmaco- epidemiology expertise for the NMUS |
|
Biostatistics: |
This is outsourced to Biostat Consulting
Sdn Bhd |
|
ICT support: |
These are outsourced to various IT
companies including NTT (data centre service), MIMOS and KSM
(hardware), Datamed Clinical Computing Sdn Bhd (databases and
applications), SecureTangent (information security), and variety
of specialty software providers (IBM/Ascential, SAS, STATA,
WHO ATC-DDD etc) |
|
Date updated: |
22/1/2008 |
