ALTEX :: Alternatives to Animal Experiments

1995, Volume 3

Pharmacokinetic Simulations for Teaching

Daniel Keller

Department Pharmazie, ETH, CH-Zürich

SUMMARY

A new pharmacokinetic simulation program called PharmaSim has been developed. It is focused on the simulation of drug plasma levels based on compartment models. The major advantage lies in the easy visualization of curves and the high speed of the simulations. When the value of a parameter changes the display of the corresponding curve reacts almost instantly (delay time < 0.1 sec.). This allows to visualize the effects of one parameter in a formula, a concept which was hard to illustrate so far. The simulations are embedded in a HyperCard-line electronic book. The contents of the tutorial pages - texts and graphics - as well as the preset values for the simulations can be saved in script files. This makes PharmaSim a tool with which many different tutorials can be created.

Keywords: pharmacokinetics, compartment model, simulation, computer program