Drugs database to make police work easier, faster

A Timaru man's painstaking work of cataloguing more than 1900 pharmaceutical drugs is expected to make life a little easier for New Zealand police.

Pharmacist Alan McClintock spent years developing the database, drugIDnz, and this month every police station in the country gained access to it in a year's trial.

Big pills, small pills, red pills, blue pills – if it was at a chemist, it was in the database, Mr McClintock said. The trial, which started on October 1, was the culmination of about 18 months of talks with police.

The database would benefit police officers who would otherwise have to go to a chemist or look through a manual to identify any pills they had found. It would make the process easier and faster.

The programme can identify a drug by comparing the officer's description of it to what Mr McClintock has entered into the system. It lists about 1900 products and has about 1500 images.

"Getting police on board is really good ... it's worked out nicely," Mr McClintock said.

The programme is used by six district health boards, including Taranaki, Nelson and Hawke's Bay, and several other organisations.

Detective Sergeant Paul Tricklebank of the National Drug Intelligence Bureau said the database would be a useful tool for officers. It showed restricted drugs, such as morphine sulphate, Ritalin (methylphenidate) and codeine.

"The main benefit to staff is a reduction in the time it can take to identify drugs found on suspects."

"We're only in the early stages and we can say we have had good feedback about it. I'm hoping it will continue. I can see the value in it."