Prescription and dispensing systems are a fundamental piece of healthcare. Providing the doctor or pharmacist with help tools in decision-making and information management on patient medication has an obvious impact on the quality of care.

ViDAL Vademecum is one of the main suppliers of this type of tools, with a wide presence in several continents. Its technology allows health professionals in these countries to have safe tools adapted to the local pharmacological products they use in their daily healthcare practice.

In its constant search for innovations and improvements for its products, ViDAL Vademecum has joined Nubentos to publish its APIs on our Marketplace for Digital Health platform, and its first APIs are now available.

Serge Winther, IT Director for Latin America and Spain, and Manuel Júlbez, Regional Director in Spain, have kindly shared with us their impressions and vision in the interview that follows.

 

Q: Hi Serge, hello Manuel, thanks for accepting our interview. Tell us a little about yourselves, your career and roles in ViDAL Vademecum.

A: (Serge) I’ve been working at ViDAL Vademecum Spain for almost 13 years. I lead the IT team of ViDAL Vademecum Latin America and Spain, which involves integration work, technical consulting, management of the professional IT team of this company, and I am in direct contact with our colleagues in France, where I was working from 2002 to 2007, for the development of our BD, and contents that we are implementing for you in Nubentos.

In my case (Manuel) I have been in ViDAL Vademecum for almost three years, and I dedicate myself to the commercial part of the business, clients and technological partners, discovering needs of this health market, covering them with our work, … and maintaining talks as productive as those I started having with your CEO Manuel Morales at the beginning of this project.

 

Q: What is ViDAL Vademecum?

A: ViDAL Vademecum is the leading company in Health Informatics in Spanish, specializing in the integration of databases of medicines and tools for clinical decision making (Clinical Decision Support Module).

ViDAL Vademecum creates high quality products on medications and treatments used by health professionals – mainly doctors (general practitioners and specialists), pharmacists, nurses, hospitals, institutions, – and by patients. ViDAL Vademecum has an interest in all topics that involve the prescription of medications, dispensing and administration.

 

Q: What value do your tools bring to the health ecosystem?

A: The information handled by ViDAL Vademecum is provided by official sources of the main drug regulatory agencies worldwide, in order to provide safe and adapted information to the local pharmacological products that health professionals access in their daily practice.

VIDAL Vademecum Databases and Clinical Decision Support Modules have been created based on official documents and forms, produced by major drug regulatory agencies in each country: EMA (Europe),FDA (USA),AFSSAPS (France), AEMPS (Spain), General Health Council (Mexico), Cofepris (Mexico), ISP (Chile), IHSS (Honduras), MSP (Ecuador), Bfarm (Germany), United Arab Emirates (HAAD), Saudi Arabia (SFDA). The goal is always to provide health professionals with a secure computing solution adapted to the pharmacological products that professionals access in their daily practice.

Through electronic products, ViDAL Vademecum offers comprehensive information on medicines, and added value in decision-making tools and related services. In addition, ViDAL Vademecum provides evidence-based guidelines for the most common diseases found by doctors.

 

Q: What specific services would you highlight as more interesting in your solution?

A: To have access to clinical reference information on medicines in Spanish, based, as we mentioned before, on national and international reference sources, to support them in clinical decision making.

 

Q: Each country has its own vademecum, regulated by the corresponding State Agency. How does this impact your solution?

A: Using State reference sources implies reliability in our work and we provide support for the clinical decision that can avoid medication errors, which cause treatment to fail and also suppose a waste of resources.

We provide  health professionals with a secure computing solution adapted to the pharmacological products that professionals access in their daily practice.

 

Q: You are publishing the Vademecum ViDAL APIs in Nubentos. What kind of consumers can find your APIs of their interest?

A: All those health professionals (health informatics, doctors, pharmacists, health management) who in their daily practice need to make clinical decisions and actions in a safe and reference environment; and therefore verify the safety of a pharmacological prescription, the risks related to the patient profile, have alerts to facilitate their prescription, validation or administration work. Have access to clinical reference information on medications in Spanish, based on national and international reference sources.

 

Q: As you know, consuming your APIs through Nubentos allows your customers to use the free tools of our platform to manage their developments and control costs. How important is it for you to offer these additional facilities to your clients through Nubentos?

A: The management of developments and costs is an additional aid in the development of health software, and provides an initial guide in the complex path of these developments. That is why we see that they are used by customers as these tools facilitate an important part of the way forward in achieving integration projects.

 

Q: What are your plans for future improvements in your APIs?

A: We are adding other Latin American countries and of course completing the services for Spain (related official alerts of a drug: safety, shortage, pharmacovigilance, etc.).

 

Q: How would you rate your experience when publishing your APIs in Nubentos?

A: The publication in Nubentos has been easy, and we have had good technical support to help us, and this point is always appreciated.

 

Q: What goals do you hope to achieve with this collaboration?

A: This collaboration will allow us to explore a complementary expansion model to the one designed in ViDAL Vademecum today, expand our knowledge in this environment. Nubentos means being able to reach customers / end users with our solution framed in this repository of solutions offered by Nubentos, without losing control of our content, reaching users in a different way.

 

Q: Would you recommend other companies that provide Digital Health solutions to bring their services to Nubentos?

A: Yes. Of course.

 

Q: Thank you again Serge and Manuel for your time, and a pleasure to have shared with you this interesting talk.

A: The pleasure has been ours, we are eager to see how this potential health world behaves, which is directed to Nubentos looking for sources of information and technological resources, to improve their health technology proposal.

 

The ViDAL Vademecum APIs for Spain are already available in our API Store, where you will find all the information, resources and tools to test them, integrate them into your systems and applications, and put them in the hands of your end users, with total control of your development costs.

Thank you for your reading and we will return soon with very interesting new interviews.

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