Our research project is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the Fonds de recherche en santé du Québec (FRSQ), and the Canadian Pharmacists Association (CPhA). We propose to examine important phenomena regarding the use and management of recommendations for drug treatment, when these recommendations are retrieved by health professionals from online databases. While access to treatment recommendations from onlinedatabases is increasing, little is known about how health professionals use such information in their routine clinical practice. In addition, we do not know how clinicians' feedback may improve the quality of retrieved information.
To address these knowledge gaps, we are conducting a study in partnership with CPhA, a provider of one online database called e-Therapeutics+. e-Therapeutics+ provides treatment recommendations from an electronic textbook and other pharmaceutical databases that are commonly used in practice. Our partnership will permit us to address two research questions. (1) How do different health professions apply recommendations derived from e-Therapeutics+? (2) How are users' reports (feedback) concerning the relevance, impact and application of treatment recommendations integrated by the provider, into the management of e-Therapeutics+?