MedicinesComplete is an online platform that started in 2004 and is a product of Pharmaceutical Press, the publishing division of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. It currently lists 26 publications and tools available for subscription that are on or related to pharmaceutics that are also applicable to nursing and nutritional sciences. Of those 26, this review will cover three: Pharmaceutical Excipients, Pediatric Injectable Drugs, and Dietary Supplements.

Content

Pharmaceutical Excipients

Pharmaceutical Excipients is based heavily on the Handbook of Pharmaceutical Excipients, which will be referred to hereafter as the Handbook. This review considers the 9th edition that was co-published in 2020 by Pharmaceutical Press and the American Pharmacists Association. The Handbook’s editors are Paul J. Sheskey, Bruno C. Hancock, Gary P. Moss, and David J. Goldfarb, all of whom bring professional experience and accolades in the pharmaceutical industry to the resource.

The Handbook is a reference source that contains over 400 monographs on pharmaceutical excipients. In general, excipients are substances that are combined with active pharmaceutical ingredients to manufacture dosage forms of drugs for therapeutic use. The monographs are offered in English and are either on singular excipients, co-processed excipients, or groups of excipients. For instance, users can reference a monograph using “Menthol”, “Mannitol and Sorbitol, Coprocessed” or “Lanolin Alcohols.”

The content for each monograph is organized into 22 sections. Examples of the sections are nonproprietary names; synonyms; structural formula; functional category; typical properties; safety; handling precautions; regulatory status; related substances; and comments. Even though users can go directly to a section for the information they need, the comments section provides explanatory text that is helpful for properly using the excipients. While the monographs mainly cover current excipients, they also cover ones that are no longer regularly used so that they remain on record. Updates are made to the Handbook periodically and mongraphs note the latest revision date. Excipient names are used for the monographs’ titles and the authors are listed beneath the titles. The monographs provide highly specialized, technical, and detailed information for users to reference when manufacturing dosage forms of medications or creating food products. Both specific and general references are listed on the monographs.

The intended audience is primarily students, residents, preceptors, and faculty in pharmacy as well as students and faculty in nutritional sciences because excipients are also used to create food products including confectionery.

Pediatric Injectable Drugs

The 12th edition of the Pediatric Injectable Drugs: The Teddy Bear Book was published in 2024 by the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists (ASHP). The authors include Stephanie J. Phelps, Tracy M. Hagemann, and Kelley R. Lee.

This edition includes 247 monographs on medications and their parenteral administration to pediatric patients. In addition to the monographs, there are six appendices but only four have content at the time of this review. Examples of the drugs covered in the monographs include abatacept, labetalol HCl, tigecycline, and vancomycin HCl. While the monographs lack a revision date, the publication itself has a last updated date of October 8, 2024 as of this writing.

The monographs’ content is organized into 16 sections. The sections cover topics including medication error potential; contraindications and warnings; dosage; preparation and delivery; IV push; intermittent infusion; continuous infusion; other routes of administration; and comments. The comments section provides information on adverse effects and laboratory interference. References are listed on the monographs. The monographs provide detailed, evidence-based information for users to reference in the administration of injectable medications to the pediatric population.

The intended audience is primarily students, residents, preceptors, and faculty in pharmacy along with students and faculty in nursing and medical school.

Dietary Supplements

Dietary Supplements, based on the 2011 book of the same name by Pamela Mason, contains 114 monographs on vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and other substances that are readily available. Examples of the supplements covered include dong quai, fish oils (omega-3s), magnesium, resveratrol, and vitamin D. This work also has three appendices. One covers drug and supplement interactions and another covers the safe upper levels of vitamins and minerals. The third is on additional resources. Interestingly, a couple of the additional journal and database resources had the library’s EZproxy links so that users could access them without issue.

The monographs’ content is in English and can be organized into 19 sections, but the number of sections varies from supplement to supplement. Examples of sections that appear consistent across supplements are action; possible uses; precautions/contraindications; pregnancy and breast-feeding; adverse effects; dose; and references. The “possible uses” section tends to be the most robust and informative with evidence provided for possible use from different study types, including epidemiological, observational, intervention, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. At the end of this section, a Conclusion box summarizes the evidence. Much like those of Pediatric Injectable Drugs, the monographs lack a revision date yet the publication itself has a last updated date of October 8, 2024 as of this writing.

The intended audience is primarily students, residents, preceptors, and faculty in pharmacy along with students and faculty in nursing, nutritional sciences, and medicine.

Features and Functionality

MedicinesComplete has a search box on the main page allowing users to search all publications to which they have a subscription at once.

Image 1: MedicinesComplete search bar (courtesy of Pharmaceutical Press)

Search results may vary depending on the user and an institution’s subscription. When I search for “glucose,” I am presented with options to select.

Image 2: Search options for “glucose” on MedicinesComplete

I selected the first option, “Glucose,” which retrieved 242 results from all subscribed publications, sorted by the best match first. Results can be filtered by subscribed publication on the left side. The Stedman’s Medical Dictionary definition for the search term is available for users to reference. Also visible in the screen capture is Dosage, which refers to the British National Formulary (BNF), which is not part of this review.

Image 3: Search results for “Glucose” on MedicinesComplete (courtesy of Pharmaceutical Press)

I selected “Glucose, Liquid” in the Pharmaceutical Excipients publication and in addition to seeing the content broken out into the sections described previously, there is a related content tab where I can see what else the excipient relates to in Dietary Supplements and Pediatric Injectable Drugs.

Image 4: Related content for “Glucose, Liquid” on MedicinesComplete (courtesy of Pharmaceutical Press)

Users also have the option to search only one of the subscribed publications by clicking on the icons to the right of the search box. For instance, clicking on the “Pediatric Injectable Drugs” icon shows the publication name in the search box.

Image 5: Publication specific search on MedicinesComplete (courtesy of Pharmaceutical Press)

Scrolling down on the main page gives users another view of the subscribed versus unsubscribed publications. Clicking on the icons for the subscribed publications here takes users directly to that publication where there are search and browse options for accessing the content.

Image 6: Browsing publications on MedicinesComplete (courtesy of Pharmaceutical Press)

Scrolling further down on the main page, users will find “Recent Publication Updates” for subscribed and unsubscribed publications along with “User Guides.”

When users go directly to the subscribed publications, the interface looks the same with a search box at the top and content in blocks for browsing. Both Dietary Supplements and Pediatric Injectable Drugs have three blocks for content with one for the monographs, a second for appendices, and a third for “About” the publications. Pharmaceutical Excipients has eight blocks for content, allowing users to choose from browsing monographs, reading chapters, browsing for suppliers, browsing excipients by functional category, browsing related substances, reading the “About” information, or looking up “E” or “EINECS” excipient numbers. ‘EINECS’ stands for European INventory of Existing Commercial chemical Substances, which is an inventory of substances on the European market between January 1, 1971, and September 18, 1981. These numbers are used to help identify the excipients used in medicine that are also used in food.

Image 7: Landing page for Dietary Supplements on MedicinesComplete (courtesy of Pharmaceutical Press)

MedicinesComplete lacks some tools that have become commonplace in electronic resources. For instance, there are no options to cite, export, download, print, email, or save monographs. I was able to save the citation for the fish oil monograph to Zotero using the Zotero Connector. It saved as a web page, so users would have to edit the item for accuracy. The URL provided for the web page citation appears to be stable, so that is one way users could get back to the monographs they need.

Business Model

MedicinesComplete is an online platform that provides a-la-cart subscriptions to publications and tools. Subscriptions are available for organizations and institutions; no individual or personal subscription options are available. Subscriptions are annual, and a percentage increase can be expected with a renewal notice that comes directly from the publications’ publishers. Subscribed publications should be the most current edition.

Our users access MedicinesComplete through IP authentication. There is no login required when accessed through the library link. When the platform times out, users can refresh their session by re-opening it again through the library link. There is no limit to the number of users. Usage data is available upon request.

Breakthrough

Pharmaceutical Excipients, Pediatric Injectable Drugs, and Dietary Supplements on the MedicinesComplete platform provide detailed, evidence-based pharmaceutical information that is regularly updated with a user-friendly interface for searching across subscriptions or browsing content. With unlimited user access and the ease with which users can access the platform through the library link, students and faculty in pharmacy, nursing, and nutrition have a resource they can use whether they are on campus or on site in pharmacies or clinicals. Even though MedicinesComplete does not have a mobile app, I can access the platform on my smartphone and find it easy to navigate and read. With the cost of electronic health resources already high and continuing to rise, the MedicinesComplete a-la-cart subscription model helps libraries fill in collection gaps or even replace similar resources. MedicinesComplete is listed on our library’s databases page and has been added to subject-specific LibGuides, where users primarily access it. Each of the publications in this review are also discoverable in our library’s catalog. The types of libraries that would benefit the most from the MedicinesComplete platform are medical school libraries as well as academic libraries at institutions with pharmacy programs.

References

ECHA: European Chemicals Agency. (2008). EC Inventory.
https://echa.europa.eu/information-on-chemicals/ec-inventory

Mason, P. (2011). Dietary supplements. (4th ed.). Pharmaceutical Press.

Pharmaceutical Press. (n.d.) About Pharmaceutical Press. https://www.pharmaceuticalpress.com/about-pharmaceutical-press/

Phelps, S. J., Hagemann, T. M., Lee, K. R., (2024). Pediatric injectable drugs: the teddy bear book (12th ed.). American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

Sheskey, P.J., Hancock, B.C., Moss, G.P., Goldfarb, D. J., (eds.) (2020). Handbook of pharmaceutical excipients (9th ed.). Pharmaceutical Press and American Pharmacists Association.