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In the new medical curriculum at Leiden University Medical Centre, the Netherlands, two aspects of the training in pharmacology and pharmacotherapy--the acquisition of knowledge and its application--have been integrated. On the basis of the approved subject matter and goals, four computer programmes were developed: the Teaching Resource Centre (TRC) Pharmacology database, the interactive TRC teaching programme, the Individual Therapy: Evaluation and Plan (ITEP), and the relational curriculum database. Together, these programmes provide the necessary knowledge in pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, pharmacotherapy and the mechanisms of drug action, as well as possibilities for monitoring the educational process. The figures are created with the aid of a symbolic language, assuring a uniform presentation of all the information throughout the curriculum. Attention is also paid to the integration of these aspects with other subjects in the medical curriculum. Implementation of the teaching system in pharmacology was started at the beginning of 2001. Currently, the TRC database contains almost all the subject matter that is planned to be included. The next step in the process will be the assessment of both the knowledge and its application. TRC Pharmacology is a new method of integrating basic knowledge of pharmacology and pharmacotherapy in a medical school curriculum.

In view of the ever increasing complexity of individualized pharmacotherapy, the study of new and potent drugs in man and the misuse and abuse of drugs, WHO-Study Group reports and a recent enquiry in Belgium, France and W. Germany stress that the development of clinical pharmacology is an absolute necessity for patients, physicians, health authorities, the pharmaceutical industry and society at large. It seems this development could be optimally achieved by setting up, within Services of General Medicine or Internal Medicine of University Hospitals and large Public Hospitals, autonomous Units of Clinical Pharmacology with the responsibility to take an active part: a) at the service level: 1) in patient care, either directly in general medical services or drug problem oriented consultations, or indirectly through consultative functions and pharmacotherapeutic conferences; 2) in drug monitoring services, management of cases of overdose, drug information, drug utilization surveys, pharmaco-epidemiology, ethical committees, formulary committees, drug regulatory agencies and studies of Phase I, II and III; b) at the teaching level: 1) in courses of clinical pharmacology sui generis, to undergraduates, in close collaboration with the University Department of Pharmacology; 2) at the postgraduate level, as a specialty in se, and as part of the training in medical specialties and at the level of continuing education of general practitioners and specialists; c) at the research level: 1) in clinical pharmacokinetic studies, with special attention to interindividual variability and genetic factors, to drug concentration/effect studies, to drug interactions, and in pharmacodynamic studies, in view of the development of new approaches in the study of drug-receptor interactions; 2) in the design, realization and evaluation of Phase I, II and III studies, clinical trials and multicenter drug studies.