| MEDICAL AFTER SALES SUPPORT
This invention relates to the provision of medical after sales support to a patient or to someone associated with a patient, such as a carer, pharmacist, relative or doctor, for a patient undergoing or prescribed for treatment with a pharmaceutical drug, medicament, medical device or other medical product.... 10 A person in need of treatment (`patient') with a medical product, for example a drug or medicament, typically purchases or obtains a relevant drug or course of drugs from a pharmacist.
5 in another embodiment, one or more codes are applied within a blister pack that contains individual doses or measures of a drug for a course of treatment, and each code only becomes visible when each blister pocket is opened.... The product code associated with the packaged product serves to identify the product to the manufacturer, who will have assigned to each product or to a group of products a 20 corresponding code, and stored the list of codes against their corresponding products as records in a product code database.
5 identify to the manufacturer such information as the type of drug, the dosages, their form as capsules the number of capsules in the box.... The information can also be captured to provide statistical information about the pattern of drug usage by the user, and thus form a medication record for the user.... Knowledge of the code allows the manufacturer to determine from records in a product code database what the drug or other medical product is, and consequently provides a means whereby the manufacturer can provide specific information 30 about the particular product or batch concerned, or more general information relevant to treatment using the type of product concerned.
When a product code is initially reported by a user to the manufacturer, the manufacturer 5 obtains or assigns an electronic user identifier or contact address for the user, and stores the user identifier or contact address in a database.... The user identifier or contact address is stored by a web host for the manufacturer, and provides a contact point or gateway between the web host and the user of a packaged product 15 having an associated product code.
Thus, for each anonymous user, a medication record is stored in a user medication record database...
with a patient having a packaged medical product, the packaged medical product having a code identifying the product, the method comprising: receiving a product code and a user identifier/contact address at a medical information computer over a communications link from a user; verifying that the received product code corresponds to a valid product code stored in a product code database; verifying that the received user identifier/contact address corresponds to a valid user identifier/contact address stored in a user identifier/contact address database; retrieving stored information related to the packaged medical product identified by the product code from a user medication record database or product information database.
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