MIMS Online is an important Australian online resource for pharmaceuticals information. 
 

It contains both abbreviated prescribing information and full prescribing information. It also contains product images, and consumer medicines information (MIMS CMI).

MIMS Online has:

• information on more than 4,500 prescription and non-prescription drugs
• a pill ID module, where you can search for a tablet/capsule image
• a Drug Interactions module, where you can identify drug interactions.
• product images
• consumer medicines information (CMI).

MIMS Online is available from CSU Library's list of Pharmacy databases.

Finding drug information

The Simple Search screen defaults to searching for Product Information. You can enter a product name, an action/indication, or a therapeutic class.

Other search modes include Pill ID, CMI, and Drug Interactions (see box below).

The Product Information Advanced Search gives you extra searching functionality.

Working with results

Each result is headed by the brand name, and includes links to:

• full PI (Product Information), abbreviated PI, or CMI (Consumer Medicine Information)
• drug interactions
• other products with the same generic ingredient
• other products in the same therapeutic class.

Finding drug interactions

There are at least three ways to find information on drug-drug interactions.

1. In the screen-shot above, we saw that a Product Info search result includes a link to information about Drug Interactions.

Simply click on that link to display a table of other drugs that interact with the drug you have found:

See below for more.

2. On the Simple Search screen, the Drug Interactions tab allows you to search for any interactions between drugs.

Enter a drug name in the search box (remember it's probably best to use the generic name), and MIMS will produce a table that lists all the drugs that interact with it. [See screen-shot below.] The interacting drugs are in the column for Interacting Molecule and are listed using generic names. The table includes information on the Route of Administration (ROA) of each (interacting) drug, and brief information about the adverse effect and the severity level. Note that the lower the severity level number, the more severe the interaction.

You can filter the results by Severity Level or by Documentation Level.

At the results list, you can click on one of the Interacting Molecules (drugs) and display all the information about the interaction.

3. The Drug Interactions search mode provides another way to check for interactions between drugs. In this case, you can search for the interactions between more than two drugs:

• Search for a drug as in 2. above
• At the results list, click on the Add/Remove Drugs link which appears above the interaction results
• On the Add/Remove Drugs screen, enter the name of a drug and click on Add
• Enter the name of a second drug and click on Add
• Continue to enter the names of drugs.
• When ready, click on Check Interactions.

Working with results (drug interactions results)

As mentioned, the table of results gives brief information about the interaction between two drugs.

To get more detailed information, simply click on the interaction (ie click on that row in the table). The details screen has several elements including Adverse Effect and Probable Mechanism. There is also a list of References.

How would you find the articles listed in the references? By copying and pasting the article title into Primo Search.

You can get help from the MIMS Online Help. If you access it from the database, it's context-sensitive, but has help screens on all aspects of using MIMS Online, and a left menu for navigation.