|
|
History
Readers are invited to notify us of any errors or notable omissions
1970 (circa) - drug information centres established in large public hospital pharmacy departments; data and record-keeping entirely paper-based; indexing typically on card-indexing systems; no access to computers, there were only mainframes in those days and no software existed to support drug information centres; no mechanism existed for data sharing between drug information centres
1979 to 1981 - National Drug Information Service (NDIS) established based on a 3-tier model:
- one federally funded National Centre, in Department of Health in Canberra; initial roles were authoring and maintaining independent drug profiles ("NDIS Profiles"), co-ordination of the other NDIS tiers, ultimate referral destination for difficult drug information enquiries escalated from other tiers
- state-government-funded Major Centres, at least one in each state capital; roles were as a referral destination for drug information enquiries escalated from local centres, and to take enquiries directly from health practitioners in their state
- Local Centres; these were never explicitly developed, the role being implemented effectively by the existence of drug information services that had evolved over the previous decade
- first use of computers in drug information in Australia, at this stage only:
- roll-out of "NDIS Network", co-ordinated by the National Centre, in the form of terminals in the Major Centres accessing the Department of Health's mainframe in Canberra; provided search, display and print of NDIS Profiles
- Medline: via NDIS Network terminals in Major Centres, dial-up access elsewhere
- still no computerised drug information logging, data indexing or data sharing
1985 - privately developed PC-based database software deployed at Victorian Drug Information Centre (VDIC, a NDIS Major Centre) to log enquiries, enabling computerised record-keeping, searching and workload analyses for the first time
1990 (circa) - federal NDIS funding withdrawn, NDIS National Centre closed, NDIS Network closed
- state-based Major Centres continue
1992 - VDIC system evolved into ANDIN (a DOS application) and made available to other drug information centres, providing:
- indexing drug information literature (journal articles, books etc.) with sophisticated search capabilities
- logging drug information enquiries, including full text of both question and answer, enabling a complete paperless system
- enquiry progress tracking and management
- workload analyses
- compliance with SHPA national standards
- centrally maintained keyword dictionary for indexing uniformity across Australia
- ANDIN widely accepted and implemented in drug information facilities across Australia
1995 - ANDINet launched, added data communications to enable electronic data-sharing between ANDIN sites
2007 - Andin2 launched (first production release build 30), complete re-write of ANDIN for Microsoft Windows
- DOS ANDIN retired
2008 - build 32: AndiNet2 verion in beta test
- build 34: minor reliability improvements and bug-fixes
2009- AndiNet2 beta version put on ice due to reliability issues
2010- build 44: minor logging improvement (command-line 'trace' switch)
- build 46: minor useability improvements
- build 48: bug-fix in recalling enquirer's previous details
- build 49:
- new option to prevent Andin2 temporarily unchecking Internet Explorer's "Reuse windows for launching shortcuts"
- improved handling of unofficial data tweaks in data migrated from DOS ANDIN
- improved search list behaviour when same user logged in simultaneously at multiple workstations
- improved error reporting
- build 50: bug-fix in convert.exe, the DOS program that implements the first stage of data migration from DOS ANDIN to Andin2
2011- build 51: new features (data repair tools)
can delete a drug information enquiry can identify and delete unused names in Master Names List handle duplicated names in Master Names List, can merge two names into one
2012- build 52: OK on Vista and Windows 7, minimum Windows version XP
2013- build 53: OK on Windows 8
2014- build 54:
- OK on Windows 8.1
- new feature: file attachments
- fixed keyword dictionary update failure if UNC path
- fixed "keyword dictionary gone missing" bug
- option to include enquirer's contact details in enquiry printout
2015- build 55: fixed bug where a new enquiry's received-date validation was incorrect under certain circumstances
- build 56:
- fixed bug where some computers did not restore file attachments correctly
- OK on Windows 10
|
|
