What we do

Scale of activity

The scale and range of the work undertaken by NPIS is considerable. The service handles more than 578,000 enquiries a year, providing support to professional NHS colleagues through its online TOXBASE database and telephone enquiry service.

The majority of this activity is online, with poison enquiries on TOXBASE reaching more than 525,000 in 2009/10. This amounts to a total of more than 1.3 million individual hits on the site. More than 53,000 telephone enquiries were answered.

In addition, NPIS assists in the education of NHS staff on the management of poisoning, conducts research both nationally and internationally into poisoning and clinical toxicology, and gives advice to government bodies and others about poisons- related issues.

Medical advice

The service includes advice from consultant clinical toxicologists. Twenty-four hour cover is provided by a group of physicians, expert in the care of poisoned patients. They work part-time for NPIS and part-time in their local hospital service.

All have day-to-day responsibility for patient care in specialist poisons units in UK teaching hospitals, and provide advice to clinicians managing patients locally. Advice is usually sought on more complex cases, or on rare or unusual poisoning presentations. About 1,300 such consultations occur annually.

On and offline

Not surprisingly in an increasingly online world, the last decade has seen a marked swing towards the Internet service, TOXBASE and away from the national telephone support service.
 
Back in 2000, the total number of TOXBASE sessions was 100,000, compared with 250,000 telephone enquiries. Since then, the trend has reversed, with online sessions reaching 525,000 in 2009/10 while telephone enquiries have fallen to 53,000.

Telephone enquiries come from hospital, primary care and NHS Direct/NHS 24 users. Almost a third (more than 15,000) involve children under the age of five. This reflects the frequency of accidental poisonings among young children.

Information integrity

TOXBASE is often the first - and sometimes the only - resource consulted by healthcare professionals in poison cases. It is, therefore, essential to safeguard the accuracy and integrity of the data it contains.

Updating and maintaining the database is a considerable task, shared by all NPIS provider units. During 2008/09 alone, almost 5,000 entries were written or revised.

An editing group - including representatives from the NPIS units and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards - meets regularly to debate and agree policy, format and content issues.

NPIS ensures its staff remain up-to-date by producing and circulating a monthly publication, Current Awareness in Clinical Toxicology, containing reviews of key scientific papers relevant to the clinical management of poisoning.

By continuous improvement and discussion, NPIS seeks to ensure the excellence and efficiency of its services, improve the accuracy and clarity of TOXBASE entries, and contribute constructively to the national debate on research and other topical poisons-related issues.

UKTIS

www.uktis.org

The UK Teratology Information Service (UKTIS) advises on drug and chemical toxicity in pregnancy. It was established in 1995 in Newcastle.

Information is provided to healthcare professionals via the UKTIS telephone service and online through TOXBASE. Healthcare professionals use the UKTIS website to make routine enquiries and to gain access to studies.

Information on the consequences of drug and chemical exposure during pregnancy is currently limited. UKTIS is endeavouring to follow pregnancy outcomes wherever possible, helping to improve our knowledge and understanding in this vital area.

UKTIS and NPIS as a whole give advice to organisations such as the Health Protection Agency, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the Commission for Human Medicines, the European Medicines Agency, the British National Formulary and the Neonatal Formulary.

UKTIS answers around 4,200 telephone enquiries a year, the great majority of them about the therapeutic use of drugs during pregnancy. In addition, there are approximately 36,000 accesses to pregnancy-related information on TOXBASE each year. UKTIS staff are constantly updating and adding new pregnancy summary information to the database to provide a comprehensive service.

 

Last reviewed: 4 February 2011