CPhA needed assistance from an experienced partner to articulate the case for funding to Health Canada and to subsequently implement a user-friendly, flexible, and extensible information management and provision solution.

CPhA engaged IBM as its strategic, technical, and hosting partner for the e-Therapeutics project. The purpose of the project is to provide easy-to-use, integrated decision-support tools that will deliver immediate access to current, evidence-based, Canadian drug and therapeutic information at the point of patient care.

The audience for e-Therapeutics is primary health care practitioners: in particular, physicians, pharmacists, nurse practitioners and nurses. The e-Therapeutics project builds on CPhA's digital media strategy, a vision that IBM helped to develop for leveraging and marketing pharmaceutical information.

A combined CPhA and IBM team will continue to provide ongoing development and maintenance support for e-Therapeutics.

As a result of the e-Therapeutics initiative, primary health care practitioners have timely access to current, evidence-based drug therapy information-including which drugs to select and their interactions, indications, dosages, and precautions-at the point of patient care. e-Therapeutics promotes best practices and better decision making, thus helping to optimize drug therapy outcomes for patients. In addition, e-Therapeutics supports more cost-effective drug use by providing streamlined access to provincial formulary information.