Requests from hospital pharmacists to research laboratories of pharmaceutical companies

It is likely that requests from hospital pharmacists to pharmaceutical companies are increasing with the greater sophistication and diversification of hospital pharmacist's practice in recent years. However, there is no nation-wide information concerning the requests to pharmaceutical companies. We surveyed the requests from hospital pharmacists to research laboratories of pharmaceutical companies by questionnaire. The questionnaires were sent to 42 national university hospitals, and 129 replies were received from pharmacists of 28 hospitals. Highly placed requests regarding drug developments included commercialization of in-hospital preparations (15.5%), commercialization of dosage forms taken easily (13.2%), improvement of packaging of medical products (24.8%), the addition of doses (19.4%) and expansion of therapeutic use of narcotics (8.6%). Hospital pharmacists requested a wide variety of information regarding effectiveness, safety, drug interactions, contraindication, instruction for use, patient instruction and guidelines. In the response calculations, 91.5 percent of hospital pharmacists wished to take part in drug development, but 68.2% of hospital pharmacists did not have contact with the research and development departments of pharmaceutical companies. These results suggest that it is necessary to establish close and bilateral exchange between hospital pharmacists and research and development departments of pharmaceutical companies in order to realize unmet hospital pharmacist's requests.