ASHP's development of patient-education programs.

On February 14 and 15, 1996, FDA sponsored a public meeting and workshop to elicit recommendations on providing written educational material that patients would find useful (see April 1, 1996, AJHP, page 712). To learn more about systems that generate patient information, particularly information that is drug specific, FDA invited companies that produce these systems to explain their approaches. Representatives from ASHP, USP, Medical Economics, Medi-Span, and First DataBank provided meeting attendees with overviews of their products. ASHP Senior Vice President Mary Jo Reilly presented the ASHP products Medication Teaching Manual and MedTeach and explained the Society's history of encouraging pharmacists to provide patients with useful information.