[Theriaque: independent-drug database for good use of drugs by health practitioners].

Thériaque is a French-drug database, which was created 25 years ago by the centre national hospitalier d'information sur le médicament (CNHIM). The aim was to collect and diffuse independent information to healthcare professionals. From the beginning, the database had two objectives: information access and data input into prescription/dispensary software. Initially accessible via Minitel, then on CD-ROM, Thériaque has been integrated into hospital software. Since 1998, Thériaque is available on the Internet (www.theriaque.org). Today, the CNHIM develops Thériaque in a totally independent way. The eight main qualities of Thériaque are: firstly, independence from pharmaceutical companies and the national healthcare insurance fund; secondly, exhaustive data collection: Thériaque gathers official information and information from reference books; thirdly, reliability: validation of the work carried out by pharmacists, references of all information sources; fourthly, accessibility: free Internet site for all health professionals, prescription analyses; fifthly, originality: integration of an international thesaurus with input from WHO or the European Pharmacopeia and scientific validated information; sixthly, interactivity with users: letterbox, user groups, identification of the needs of health professionals; seventhly, collaboration with other databases or health authorities, that is, EMEA, INCa, HAS or AFSSAPS, which made it possible to develop the concept of infovigilance; eighthly, interoperability: undoubted identification of a drug allowing secure communication between different software. The number of users increased regularly: 41,000 monthly users of the Internet site at the end of 2006 and 216 hospitals using software-integrating Thériaque. Thériaque participates in ensuring the safety of the drug circuit and helps prevent iatrogenic events as it has been defined in France in the decree of 24th August 2005.