PDR Network partners with NewCrop, a leading e-prescribing platform

In the very near future, doctors using EHR systems will be able to look up relevant drug information, write a scrip, and record the action, all from essentially one screen—and do this on an office computer, an interactive tablet, or a smartphone. The technical capability to do this is present today, but the relationships among e-prescribing systems, EHRs and drug databases are still being worked out. Now, one step forward is a partnership between PDR Network (Montvale, NJ) and NewCrop International LLC (Houston), a technology provider for e-prescribing that says that its software is integrated into 160 EHR systems, serving 27,000 prescribers, today. PDR Network says that it has similar relationships with about 20 other EHR vendors (but there are hundreds more coming onto the market).

From the EHR side, according to Andrew Gilman, SVP of vendor relations at PDR Network, vendors are racing to provide the broadest functionality and broadest information resources they can, to attract provider customers. From the pharma side, information that manufacturers have (and that many prescribers want to see) gets restricted, either by provider practices (such as no-see offices that bar pharma reps), or are accessible only with difficulty. “We want to sit at the intersection of these two drivers,” says Gilman, “providing manufacturers a convenient way to interact with dozens of EHR systems, and providing EHR vendors with ease of use in integrating information that prescribers want.”

Besides its well-known publication, the Physician’s Desk Reference (which contains full label information on drugs), PDR Network provides real-time alerts, adverse event warnings, and commercially useful content like patient assistance programs. Gilman says that the Network services nicely complement other drug databases used in the industry, and through its relationships with a broad number of medical societies, is already the preferred conduit for those alerts to several hundred thousand prescribers.