Web Services Now Available for EMRs to provide drug information

In the last several years that have been more and more EMR entrants into the ambulatory marketplace. As part of the development of these products they have been required to include drug information as part of their clinical decision support solution. Lately there have been more requests to provide this drug and medicine information by way of web services calls rather than embedding the data directly into the product. Often times there might be limitations on the EMR's development team and accessing this drug information through web services call could be the simpler solution.

Lexicomp recently released web services calls for drug information that would cover Meaningful Use Stage 1. So for EMRs in the development stage looking for:

Drug - allergy checking
Drug - drug interaction
Duplicate therapy checking
Drug lists

You might want to give Lexicomp a call.

Comments for Web Services Now Available for EMRs to provide drug information

Friday, August 12, 2011 by Mark Dachille:: Another aspect to web services is that there is no need to update a local database. Everytime you send a web service request, the most current and accurate information is returned.

Depending on their delivery method, this can be a real asset to some software vendors with multiple customer sites.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011 by Matt:: A great use for this kind of solution is with EMRs that target specialists, dentists, and others who have a limited need for this functionality. Web services allow the functionality to be easily implemented while freeing up development resources for features that are in more demand by the specialist users.