The Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Gadjah Mada University (Former head: Dr. Budiono Santoso, Dr. Sri Suryawati . The current head: Dr. Sulanto Saleh Danu, SpFK.)was set up in April 1987, after long being a Division of Clinical Pharmacology in the former Department of Pharmacology since 1984. The nickname "farklin" was given by the medical students of the year 1987, an acronim for "farmakologi klinik". The nickname "farklin" has now become very popular among the students, colleagues, counterparts, and customers, and nicely substitutes the long name: Department of Clinical Pharmacology.

The Department is an active unit, with a wide variety of teaching, research and service activities. It involved in the planning and operation of very successful International Network for Rational Use of Drugs (INRUD) since its inception 1989. The INRUD Core Group in Yogyakarta is very interdisciplinary with intensive involvement of social scientists, pharmacists, and other disciplines. The Department participated in many INRUD and World Health Organization-supported research activities, e.g., the development and testing of the WHO Indicators for rational drug use, the WHO Guide to Good Prescribing, interactive methods to reduce injection prescribing in Indonesia, and self-monitoring of drug usage by district health workers. Since 1988 the Department publishes a regular drug information bulletin named Lembaran Obat dan Pengobatan (LOP).The LOP is an active member of the International Society for Drug Bulletins (ISDB) since 1987.

In 1990 the Department, supported by WHO, organized and hosted the first national workshop for medical schools in Indonesia on including the principles of rational drug use in the undergraduate medical curricula, which was attended by over 60 participants. In 1993 the Department organized and hosted the Asian Conference on Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, attended by approximately 300 international participants, which was instrumental in expanding the scope of traditional clinical pharmacology in Asia toward issues of drug use in community and public health. In 1994 the Department organized and hosted the first regional WHO/INRUD training course in Promoting Rational Drug Use, with over 30 funded participants from outside Indonesia. In 2000 the Department organized the International Training Course on Promoting Rational Drug Use, attended by 46 participants. An International Course on Drugs and Therapeutics Committee (DTC) has been developed by WHO-EDM (Geneva) and the Management Sciences for Health (MSH-Washington). The first DTC Course was organized in Yogyakarta, June 2001. In collaboration with the Center for International Health of Boston University, the Department organized an International Training Course on Drug Policy Issues in Developing Countries, in November/December 2001.

The Department staff have close relations with the Ministry of Health and the National Agency for Drug and Food Control, and participated in governmental committees on drug evaluation, national essential medicines list, revision of Indonesian Pharmacopeia, developing national clinical research guidelines, etc.

The Department has a close networking with district health officers in Yogyakarta and Central Java Provinces. For example, Sleman District Health Office provides a field-laboratory to the Department for research in pharmaceutical management, medicines policy, and decentralization. Over the years, the Department has been visited by fellows or visitors from within and outside Indonesia to share and to learn experiences in promoting rational use of drugs, pre-marketing drug evaluation, bioavailability studies, including research and training activities.

A number of international collaborative activities have been done in the Department, for examples with the World Health Organization, and with the International Network for Rational Use of Drugs (INRUD).

For over 15 years, there has been an increasing number as well as expanding scopes of studies undertaken by the Department of Clinical Pharmacology in the area of clinical pharmacology, drug utilization, pharmacoeconomics, and medicines policy. There is also an obvious needs to embark in more interdisciplinary studies on medicines policy and drug utilization studies. This is mainly due to increasing problems of drug utilization in health facilities and in the community at large in Indonesia.