Thomson Reuters is beefing up the support side of its decision support tool with the release of Micromedex 2.0.

The clinical information software solution contains evidence-based information on drugs, disease management, toxicology, neonatal dosing, alternative medicines and patient education and is used by more than 3,500 hospitals in 83 countries. Officials at the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company say the new version of the 30-year-old tool adds new search modifications and user interfaces, including compatibility with mobile devices like the iPhone, iPod Touch and Blackberry.

“The market is becoming open to more and more options,” said Win Eckert, the company’s director of product management. “We actually went through about six or seven rounds, or interactions, with more than 60 different users to get to where we are now.“

Jill Sutton, Thomson Reuters’ vice president of product management, says the company drew upon its client base of clinicians to create search algorithms, often re-creating a “day in the life” of a pharmacist, physician or nurse to determine how Micromedex would be used.

“Our editors go through training on how to really evaluate a study,” she added. “They look at multiple studies to balance contradictory evidence and rate content. There’s a lot more research being published these days. There’s so much information out there, and healthcare is dynamic.”

Among the company’s clients is Peninsula Regional Medical Center in Salisbury, Md.

“Micromedex has always had great evidence-based clinical content,” said Dennis Killian, the hospital’s director of pharmacy. “With 2.0, they have rebuilt the search and user interface to fit the way clinical people work. Multi-term searching gets you to the answer you need more quickly than before, and the 360-degree dashboard displays all the different types of information available for a specific drug.”

Sutton said Thomson Reuters is working on both mobile products and Web-based services, as well as consumer-facing tools. She said the most pressing need in healthcare now are tools that mine information from hospital systems and connect with clini9cal decision support tools.
“We’re really just trying to ease the user to the answer,” she said.