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Lady Bracknell admits that, before she read this story - - she was blissfully ignorant of the fact that those folded up leaflets in tiny weeny print which are always tucked into boxes of tablets are known in the trade as patient information leaflets (PILs). Over the next five years, the information in all 25,000 PILs must be made available in alternate formats on request. X-PIL is a new service for pharmacists which offers the leaflets in Braille, large print, CD-Rom, etc. Next year, the service will expand to include a website from which PILs will be available for download in various formats, including audio. (It would appear that the 'x' in X-PIL stands for "accessible". Which demonstrates a rather novel approach to spelling . . .)

Lady Bracknell will be going to pick up her many and various prescription meds before the week is out, and she intends to print the article out for her pharmacist just in case the news hasn't reached him yet.

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