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In 1976, Crook invited Colin Trevena to come
to Canberra and give a talk on his shelf reference counselling cards, which covered the top 100 NHS products.
Trevena said that the shelf reference cards were the most important part of the system ‘just like having
all your textbooks opened
at the right page with
all the relevant sections
underlined’. Ted Crook suggested to him that he really ought to put the system on to a computer and the concept of Chemdata, the company set up by Trevena and Crook was born.
Patient counselling needed more resources to access and deliver the right information to the public. New technology may not have been immediately obvious but it was
an inevitable outcome. The profits from the sales of almost 3000 sets of Colloc card systems were used to purchase the initial hardware to develop the ChemData Pharmacy Computer Software System.
Together they tried to get access
to a computer in Canberra to trial their idea. It is amazing to think
that at that time there were only
four suitable computers in the ACT, two of which were owned by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), one by the Chifley Library and one owned by the TAB. Thinking there was no harm in asking, Crook actually rang ASIO and asked if they could share space and time on their computer and not surprisingly, they didn’t think that was a good idea. Nor did the Chifley Library, but after meeting the chairman of the TAB, Jim Pead on
an airline flight and following a lot
of lobbying of the board by Crook and others, the TAB allowed Ted and Colin to use their system.
As a labour of love, but with the business potential in mind, Crook and Trevena began keying in all the details of the Colloc shelf reference cards with a lot of help from
Patient counselling
ACTAB programmers John Green and Phil Thomson who became fellow ChemData shareholders and directors.
Trevena worked at his pharmacy
by day and he would research and compile the data at home each night.
The two partners had to find agents in the Australian states because in those days there was no mutual recognition arrangement for the registration of companies. It was a significant risk, but the project bore fruit and had worked.
Without this early work, it is doubtful whether Trevena and Crook would have been able to undertake
a separate exercise of computerising the prescription dispensing process. Ted and Colin could see how much time this would save pharmacists. Until then, ‘pharmacists had to record every prescription manually in a prescription book, they had to index the prescriptions for future reference, and with the NHS you actually stamped the script and filled in by hand the codes and the repeat forms’.2 They also had to fill out a Dangerous Drugs Register by hand. It was all very time consuming.
The ChemData program developed custom produced product and
drug information files prepared by pharmacists Trevena and Crook, assembled from multiple sources
and arranged in unique files by programmers Green and Thomson. A new version of each unique drug file, wholesaler specific, was provided to each subscriber every month together with an improved version of the
software program, thus the monthly update was born.
Trevena stated that: ‘Chemdata sees its sophisticated data and applications of this data
as allowing pharmacists to practise their profession with a degree of dignity denied in latter years due to cost pressures. The speed of operation allows time
to be created for more
patient involvement by the pharmacist, and this results in customer loyalty.’3
Chemdata was by no means the only system available and Foundation Computer Systems, George Bernath’s Data Design, API and Faulding’s System 351 and Computerised Dispensaries Services were also major players. Patrick Mahony, later to be
a Guild branch committee member managed the systems for API. Peter Brunskill, a pharmacist was an early adopter of a Vision Management system in his father Norman’s modern pharmacy in Mosman. Peter Feros marketed the Feros Riley system.
Once the IBM PC became available there were many little firms that entered the market but Chemdata always claimed to be the most
visible system because of its patient information leaflets, a world first and forerunner of today’s CMI, script receipts, reminders, patient profiles and medication histories and as well as drug interaction checking. After all, Crook and Trevena had written to over 110 manufacturers to ensure that their patient information leaflets were up to date. Other suppliers could not match such features.
In 1983 ChemData joined with Bruce McConochie’s Amfac group and using their excellent marketing skills had by 1987 gained 60% penetration of the market when the first ever national survey of the extent of computer use in Australia was conducted in all states and territories.4 Over the next few years there was an industry shakedown with many of the smaller players being taken over by Amfac Chemdata or the other leading
volume 5 no 37 NOVEMBER 2009
Pharmacy History Australia 17