Computers in pharmacokinetics. Choosing software for clinical decision making.

Over the past 20 years, pharmacokinetic programs have been developed for clinical decision making. These clinical pharmacokinetic software programs are designed to assist the clinician in the analysis, interpretation and reporting of serum drug concentration data for a variety of medications. The programs vary in the extent of features and range of medications supported and thus warrant careful review before selecting or purchasing such a program for routine use. A series of programs which are commercially available in the United States was reviewed for this article. The focus of the review is not to recommend a single program or to provide a ranked list of commercially available programs. Information is presented to clinicians to better their understanding of the features of these computer-based clinical resources. As an introduction to this topic, the information presented concentrates on the system and support features. Those programs that were reviewed demonstrate the ability to assist in the analysis of serum or plasma drug concentration data for most of the medications that warrant therapeutic drug monitoring. They provide both Bayesian and non-Bayesian methods for predicting serum drug concentrations. Standard personal computers were sufficient to run each of the programs reviewed. In addition, most programs offered technical and clinical support. However, the quality of the user manuals and training material varies among software programs. In-depth analytical comparisons are currently being conducted for future publication.