PRECISE PK, Version 15.02.13 (February 2015)

Journal of Analytical Toxicology 2015;39:577 doi:10.1093/jat/bkv059 Advance Access publication May 29, 2015 Software Review PRECISE PK, Version 15.02.13 (February 2015). Philip Anderson, Jenn Ting and Anjum Gupta, Healthware Inc., San Diego, CA, 2011, URL: http://precisepk.com, email: , $699 annual or $79.95 monthly subscription. Precise PK is a pharmacokinetics software package intended for therapeutic drug monitoring that has been in clinical use for 30 years. It was known as T.D.M.S. 2000 until 2014. The program is compatible with Windows 8, 7, Vista, XP, 2000, 98, 95 and ME, and can be used over a network with a shared database. Pharmacokinetic parameters based on population estimates are provided for 14 commonly monitored drugs (amikacin, ciprofloxacin, digoxin, fluconazole, gentamicin, levofloxacin, lithium, phenobarbital, phenytoin, procainamide, quinidine, theophylline, tobramycin and vancomycin). The package contains a User’s Manual that defines the abbreviations used, describes the physiologic parameters required and illustrates the pharmacokinetic formulas utilized in the calculations. The User’s Choice option is the feature that will undoubtedly be of greatest interest to analytical toxicologists. It is a generic onecompartment model in which the user supplies the starting pharmacokinetic parameters, including the subject’s sex, age, body weight, height and current renal function status, together with the drug (or chemical) name, plasma clearance, absorption rate constant, volume of distribution and bioavailability. Doses, oral, intramuscular and/or intravenous, of various sizes given at uneven intervals over a period of hours or days may then be entered and charted. Finally, a report can be printed that shows the pertinent kinetic data together with a chart of the serum concentrations over time. Any of the inputted information, such as subject weight, timing or sizes of the doses, volume of distribution, etc., can be altered in order to see the effect on the predicted serum levels. The new settings will not be saved unless the Save feature is selected, but a new serum level graph can be displayed and printed using the computer’s PrintScreen function. The software has excellent flexibility. Besides the Population estimates and User’s Choice option, it also offers Bayesian curve fitting and non-linear least-squares curve fitting. Most features can be customized depending on the needs of the user. Precise PK software is updated twice a year on average. Updates include changes based on newly published data, user feedback and in-house improvements in functionality. Users are informed of updates by email and also via the program itself. The users may update the version from within the program by clicking the Update Version button under the Settings menu. The Precise PK User Manual is updated as program changes are made. Each subscriber license is specific to one facility. The license allows the program to be installed on any number of computers within the licensed facility. It can be installed on individual workstations, multiple workstations using a shared database or on a central server accessed by multiple workstations. A free 60-day downloadable trial version is available upon request. The User Manual that is included in the software package for the current version is not an instruction book, but rather simply provides background as to the functioning of the software; it is not available in pdf or printed form, although this option is due to be offered soon. However, the manual for version 14.12.16 (December 2014) is available online at http://precisepk.com/media/guides/ PPK_User_Manual_2015.pdf, and this does give detailed instructions as to proper use of the program features. Plans are also in place for a telephone technical assistance line, online tutorials and user webinars. My suggestions for future revisions would include being able to express drug concentrations in terms of mg/L rather than mg/L and in whole blood (after inputting a conversion factor) as opposed to serum, and the ability to print the serum level charts in various configurations and to save these as pdf files. Perhaps, patient name could be expressed as subject name, and other routes of administration, such as inhalation (smoking), dermal, rectal, etc., could be added. Also, the report layout, font style and type size should be adjustable; the name and address of the agency and name and title of the person issuing the report should appear along with a unique report number, and the report should be savable to a permanent file in pdf format. I found Dr Anjum Gupta, a Professor in the Cognitive Science Department at the University of California San Diego and one of the major developers, to be extremely patient and helpful during my exploration of this program. I highly recommend this software package in its current form to any of my colleagues who need to perform kinetic estimations as part of their drug/chemical investigations. And, the promised additional features should serve to enhance its value as a supplementary tool for the analyst. Randall Baselt Toxicologist, Seal Beach, CA # The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email:  (...truncated)