To the Editor. With students being the recipients of education in a classroom setting, their participation in curriculum development should be considered. As pharmacy students of the inaugural class at Manchester University College of Pharmacy in Fort Wayne, Indiana, we were fortunate to have the chance to be involved in developing our curriculum. We had opportunities, such as end-of-course evaluations and focus groups, to voice our positive and constructive criticism to mold our developing program. Courses such as Integrated Pharmacotherapy incorporated student focus groups to provide weekly feedback on the effectiveness of the faculty member's presentation and clarity of PowerPoint slides. Drug Literature Evaluation is another course that relied on student input to identify difficult topics from the previous semester, which allowed the faculty member to incorporate the topics into new lectures to further clarify them.Our personal involvement in course development began with a semester-long advocacy project assignment in the Population Health Management course. The assignment's purpose was to have students identify an underserved group and become advocates for it. For our project, we aimed to create a learning opportunity that would allow students to gain experience with pharmacogenomics, an impactful topic not offered by the curriculum at that time. We proposed to establish an advanced pharmacy practice experience (APPE) in pharmacogenomics and chose the US National Institute of Health (NIH) as the experience site.Working closely with our project mentor, we conducted meetings with our experiential director to learn from other institutions that focus on pharmacogenomics. We also reached out to a faculty member, who was a former NIH employee, for contact information at NIH. We identified local practitioners who incorporated pharmacogenomics in their daily practices and brainstormed potential assignments for the APPE site. Examples of assignments included an opinion paper on genetic testing and an nonprescription presentation on genetic testing being offered at the time. The final product of our advocacy project took the form of a course syllabus. Our advocacy for pharmacogenomics proved to be impactful in that an instructor for an upcoming elective course on pharmacogenomics requested to collaborate with us for ideas on potential course outcomes.Pharmacogenomics is just one of the many areas that would benefit from student involvement in course development. We encourage schools to go a step further and have student involvement at the earliest phases of course development, such as constructing learning objectives and writing case studies for difficult topics. Challenging students to collaborate with faculty members and to cocreate topics would likely enhance engagement and interest among students.1 Furthermore, these instances of co-created courses create opportunities for career exploration and inspire students to pursue innovative career paths. Having students take part in curriculum development cultivates a se...

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Acknowledgements:The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the paper. Conflict of Interest:The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose. Key words: online pharmacies; consumer behavior; regulations Abstract Objectives: The objective of this study was to explore the conformity of online sites with established quality standards. Methods: Online pharmacies with the NABP Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) designation were scrutinized for their conformity with select criteria established by the National Association of Board of Pharmacies (NABP) and FDA consumer guidelines. Results: 36 VIPPS certified online pharmacy sites were included in the study. The sites were examined against VIPPS and FDA standards. The criteria related to the design and content of the web site and to the pharmaceutical services being offered through the site. Lack of clear terminological distinction between "online pharmacy" (a business) and "online site" (a tool for a business) was problematic. Sites did not adhere to uniform design principles. The scope and availability of pharmaceutical services for online consumers were not readily apparent. Conclusion:The very legitimacy of existing criteria for online pharmacies remains to be established. Significant opportunities exist to improve the quality and scope of policies and to tie them more closely to longstanding best-practices in areas such as web usability and pharmaceutical care. Revision recommendations for VIPPS criteria are discussed. IntroductionTechnology-enabled services have become the bedrock of innovative healthcare and product delivery models. Decreasing cost of technology is allowing companies to satiate growing consumer appetite for convenient, just-intime, and customized products. In this new era, the online marketplace for pharmaceutical care and pharmaceutics has proven to be particularly vast, transnational, and ever expanding. As compared to the traditional brick-and-mortar shopping experience, the online marketplace offers consumers superior convenience, ability to comparison shop for prices, and anonymity.

Objective. To describe and assess student perceptions and performance on a medication use evaluation (MUE) team project. Design. Following a 1-hour MUE lecture in a 62-student patient safety course, student teams (n514) were assigned a medication safety or quality issue. Teams worked with a mentor to design an MUE to address the issue. The deliverable was a verbal presentation recorded as a webinar. Assessment. Presentations were assessed by 2 reviewers for content and style. Mean score was 45.0 1/-2.7 of 50 points. Students rated level of agreement that they could perform MUE-related skills pre-and postproject (n535 and 34, respectively) on a 5-point Likert scale. Students perceived improved ability to design an MUE after project completion (median 3 vs 4; p50.003). Student comfort with sample determination, data, collaborators, study limitations, and potential project impact also improved. Conclusion. Teams achieved the objective of successfully designing an MUE, and related enabling outcomes (ie, supportive activities that contribute to designing an MUE), as measured by evaluators and student perceptions.Key Words: Medication use evaluation; medication safety; pharmacy informatics INTRODUCTIONThe American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) defines medication use evaluation (MUE) as "a performance improvement method that focuses on evaluating and improving medication-use processes with the goal of optimal patient outcomes."1 Applications of MUE can range from evaluation of the use of a specific medication or class of medications, assessment of specific steps of the medication use process (ie, selecting, procuring, ordering, dispensing, administering, or monitoring), or appraisal of patient care based on disease state. MUE can be broadly used to determine whether medication use is safe and effective compared to a standard of care at the site, rather than specific patient level; typically this aim is accomplished using observational study designs.1-2 MUE activities are required for accreditation by The Joint Commission (TJC) and are often coordinated and conducted by pharmacists. Multiple recent examples of pharmacistcoordinated MUE projects in various therapeutic areas, in both institutional [3][4][5][6][7] (eg, assessing effectiveness of a vancomycin dosing nomogram) and managed care [8][9][10] (eg, assessing whether tamoxifen is being used for evidence-based, off-label indications) settings, are available in the literature. MUE is not explicitly described in the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) Standards and Guidelines for the Professional Program in Pharmacy Leading to the Doctor of Pharmacy Degree; however, several topics related to MUE are described in Appendix B of the standards (ie, suggested didactic topics) including "managing and improving the medication use process" and "continuous quality improvement programs."11 Similarly, the Center for the Advancement of Pharmaceutical Education (CAPE) Educational Outcomes describe activities inherent to MUE such as "utilizing. . .reso...