When treating patients, one of the most complex decisions you make is determining the right drugs and dosing. Evidence changes quickly, patient cases grow more complex, and the therapeutic options keep expanding. You need support when making those decisions, and you need those decisions to align with your other care team members’ actions across a patient’s care continuum.
The power of one voice for drug information
UpToDate topics deliver real-world evidence-based insights and recommendations to support you when making appropriate drug decisions for your patients. With our drug monographs — each containing details for adult, pediatric, and geriatric populations — you are equipped to make confident decisions for each unique patient.
The same editorial team develops the drug topics in UpToDate and the more extensive drug information found in Lexicomp®. This means the content you see when treating the patient tightly aligns with what is used by nurses, pharmacists, and other care team members who use Lexicomp. This synergy alleviates unnecessary back and forth communication when discrepancies arise between disconnected resources. And it helps patients, because they receive clear, consistent instructions and guidance throughout their journey.
Easily access key drug information
When treating a patient, you move fast but need to make the best possible decision possible. Clear, concise drug monographs make it easy to apply the drug information to the decision at hand. In addition to drug topics, UpToDate grants you access to the following drug databases:
- General and disease-specific dosing, including evidence-based off-label dosing
- Detailed dose adjustments for impaired kidney or liver function, obesity, or toxicity
- Pediatric and neonatal dosing and drug administration
- A separate drug interactions program (Lexi-Interact) that provides more in-depth analysis of drug-drug, herb-drug and herb-herb interactions
- Drug adverse effects, warnings, and precautions including practical detail such as premedication information and patient monitoring parameters
- Drug administration detail including drug brands, available strength and dosage form information
- Current FDA Special Alerts and major Health Canada safety communications
The drug and drug interactions databases in UpToDate add another level of knowledge to clinical practice and help improve the quality and safety of care.
Need deeper drug information?
For more extensive drug resources and support, explore the content sets and tools available with a complete Lexicomp subscription.
Setting the standard: Expanded renal dosing
Studies show that 13.4% of the world’s population suffers from chronic kidney disease1, and acute kidney injuries occur in 23% of hospitalized patients2 — and yet renal dosing continues to be a challenge worldwide because there has not been a gold-standard for those recommendations.
Treatments for this vulnerable patient population have expanded, as has the evidence on appropriate dosing. With drug information in UpToDate, you have access to newly expanded renal dosing in drug monographs that deliver deep, nuanced recommendations for appropriate dosing patients with renal disease, accounting for the unique needs of individual patients. This aligns with what your care team will see in Lexicomp because it is developed by the same editorial team.
Drive formulary adherence at the point of prescribing
Clinicians may not know details of your formulary policy when submitting orders. By integrating Formulink custom formulary database service into UpToDate, they see your organization’s formulary — including a drug’s formulary status along with organizational restrictions, policies, and procedures — at the same moment they’re researching a condition and deciding on a medication. By making your formulary easy to see prior to submitting an order, it saves time and reduces delays caused by communication back and forth between the pharmacist and prescriber. The result? Medication ordering becomes more efficient for everyone, and most importantly, patients begin their medication therapy as soon as possible.
The integration of Formulink in UpToDate
Lexicomp Formulink custom formulary solution is now integrated in UpToDate for access to hospital drug policy information in the same workflow as clinical decision support.
- Hill N. R., Fatoba S. T., Oke J. L., et al. Global prevalence of chronic kidney disease - a systematic review and meta-analysis. PLoS One. 2016;11(7, article e0158765) doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0158765.
- Wang H. E., Muntner P., Chertow G. M., Warnock D. G. Acute kidney injury and mortality in hospitalized patients. American Journal of Nephrology. 2012;35(4):349–355. doi: 10.1159/000337487.