If you work in a pharmacy, you know just how relentless the pace can be. Between clinical decision-making, operational management, and ensuring patient safety, you're constantly juggling multiple priorities — quickly, efficiently, and often simultaneously. And the current landscape only adds to the pressure: staffing shortages across the healthcare system, increasingly complex care needs, and the expanding scope of pharmacy practice are all contributing to a growing strain on pharmacy teams.
Fortunately, there are effective ways to maintain high-quality services, even in a demanding environment. Thoughtfully designed digital tools, developed with the realities of frontline practice in mind, can make a significant difference.
RxVigilance is a prime example. By integrating multiple clinical tools into a single platform, it streamlines workflows, minimizes unnecessary clicks, and allows you to stay focused on what truly matters: delivering safe, attentive care to your patients.
Developed in Canada, RxVigilance has supported safe, evidence-based drug therapy decision-making for frontline healthcare teams for nearly 30 years. Widely recognized across the healthcare community, it is highly regarded for its intuitive interface, comprehensive and reliable content, and centralized access to essential clinical resources.
Two of its most widely used and trusted modules are the drug monographs and the powerful drug profile analysis tool:
But RxVigilance offers much more than that.
As part of our ongoing drive to help you save time and increase efficiency, we would like to highlight five must-have modules that are key to the work of pharmacy teams.
This often-overlooked module lets you check drug reimbursement details with a single click across all Canadian provincial programs. It centralizes essential information—coverage criteria, billing codes, editable forms, and links to relevant bodies—so you don’t have to jump between multiple websites.
As a clinician, this module helps me quickly answer questions about treatment coverage: Is it reimbursed? Does it require a special authorization or simply a code on the prescription? It’s also incredibly useful for advising a colleague on whether the planned treatment is likely to be covered.
This module brings together 20+ clinically useful calculators in one place, saving you from scouring the web or using unreliable tools.
Among the formulas available, you’ll find those needed to adjust certain medications (e.g., aminoglycosides, phenytoin), convert units (mg/mL, mmol/L, °F/°C), estimate clinical risks (CHADS-VASc, Framingham, HAS-BLED), or assess renal function (Cockcroft-Gault, MDRD, modified Schwartz).
As a clinician, I can easily compare the eGFR from my software to other formulas to make better-informed decisions about adjusting certain medications. I can also assess cardiovascular risk to recommend appropriate prevention strategies or further personalize treatment targets based on individual risks and benefits. It may not be the tool I use most often in my workflow, but it’s invaluable for many clinical tasks.
The comparative tables are grouped into two types:
The first allow you to compare different molecules within the same class, to identify, for example, equivalent doses, specific side effects, or particular indications.
The second present general principles of treating a disease, therapeutic targets, and considerations for specific populations, such as pregnant women.
As a clinician, I know that in the event of a supply shortage, I can quickly find replacement options suited to the patient’s current dose. Thanks to these tables, I can easily identify the optimal treatment for a condition without diving back into complex guidelines or searching through multiple sources. It’s an ideal solution for optimizing therapy or answering colleagues on the spot.
This module brings together several hundred standardized formulas to make it easier for pharmacies to prepare products such as magic mouthwashes, topical formulations, liquid solutions, or more complex Galenic formulations.
As a clinician, I see many advantages for my peers:
First, each clear and complete sheet includes the ingredients, preparation steps, storage conditions, required materials, estimated preparation time, counselling points, and label templates. The information aligns with regulatory requirements in each province, ensuring safe and compliant preparations across the country.
Next, the content is regularly reviewed by our expert team of pharmacists and enhanced through our partnership with Quebec’s Standardized Compounding Formulas program (Magistrales standardisées du Québec).
Finally, this centralized index saves time and money by eliminating the need to search through multiple sources, many of which require payment.
To support treatment adherence and self-management at home, pharmacists can generate personalized administration schedules for patients in just a few seconds.
The dose tapering tool automatically produces a structured weaning schedule, for prednisone, for example. Simply enter key details like the start date, initial dose, and tapering interval, and the tool takes care of the rest. It even calculates the total treatment duration, and the number of tablets required.
Another daily essential is the ophthalmic products calendar, which helps patients coordinate the use of multiple eye medications, especially after surgery.
As a clinician, I’ve saved countless valuable minutes and hours over the years thanks to these tools. They’ve truly become an essential part of my workflow. I also have a soft spot for the Monthly Manual calendar, which makes it easy to set up a schedule without complex settings.
Beyond all the tools covered above, RxVigilance offers a rich library of patient information sheets.
Pharmacists can extend their counselling role outside the pharmacy walls by handing out printable content on:
Do you know the different ways RxVigilance can work for you?
In its integrated version with pharmacy management software, an electronic medical record, or another system, it automatically links to the patient’s file. This provides access to all features directly within the workflow, with its associated benefits, including reduced double entry.
In practical terms, this makes it possible, among other things, to:
Whether you are at the pharmacy, on the go, or at home, RxVigilance is with you everywhere. You can use the web version from any device with an internet connection. Access is simple, fast, and unified through a single user account.
To suit your needs, two licence types are available: essential and complete.
In addition, the mobile app (available for Android and Apple) delivers a seamless user experience and provides access anytime, anywhere, even without an internet connection.
As a pharmacist working in community practice for over 10 years, I have been using these tools for several years, and I can confidently say that RxVigilance has become essential to my practice. Having reliable, Canada-specific information at my fingertips that is concise, easy to consult, regularly updated by trusted professionals, and powered by a fast, high-performance analysis engine is, in my view, simply indispensable for practising effectively in community pharmacy in 2025.