Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona - Hospital

What is a medicine?

What is a medicine?

It is a preparation of different compounds (biologic, chemical or cellular) that are used for the purpose of improving the health of the children who have a disease, to stop it or to prevent it. Not only do they help to relieve the symptoms of a disease: they are also used to diagnose diseases. For example: when we take a syrup in order to test how the syrup circulates through our stomach. In this case, this medicine helps doctors to know what kind of disease affects this organ.

Medications may appear in different formats: pills, capsules, syrups, creams, injections ...

Medical devices are devices used to diagnose or treat a disease. These are their main objectives:

• Allow doctors to collect information. For example, a thermometer to measure fever or a glucose meter.

• They serve to improve or treat the effects of the disease. For example, an inhaler to control an asthma attack or a syringe to inject insulin into diabetic children.