Academic detailing

Editors-In-Chief: Tracy Y. Wang, M.D., Grendel Burrell, Eric Peterson, M.D., Robert Harrington, M.D. and C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D.

Academic detailing is “university or non-commercial-based educational outreach.” The process involves face-to-face education of prescribers by trained health care professionals, typically pharmacists, physicians, or nurses. The goal of academic detailing is to change prescribing of targeted drugs to be consistent with medical evidence, support patient safety, and to be cost-effective medication choices. A key component of non-commercial or university-based academic detailing programs is that they (academic detailers, management, staff, program developers, etc.) do not have any financial links to the pharmaceutical industry. Academic detailing has been studied for over 25 years and is effective at improving prescribing of targeted medications about 5% from baseline.

Many academic detailing programs exist around the world. In the United States, university-based state programs exist in Vermont, Pennsylvania , and South Carolina. Programs also exist in Canada through the Canadian Academic Detailing Collaboration (CADC) and Australia through the Drug and Therapeutics Information Service (DATIS) and via the National Prescribing Service (NPS). In Belgium academic detailing is provided by Project Farmaka.