In speaking with a number of EMR developers and in reviewing many products which integrate clinical decision support utilizing commercial drug database, a few things have become apparent. One of the the biggest challenges is to integrating clinical decision support for functions like drug-drug, drug-allergy, drug condition interaction checking in a meaningful way that is not disruptive to a clinicians workflow. Many times just throwing alerts at clinicians can lead to alert fatigue and eventually alerts will be ignored. In my experience, having a clinical resource to help with development will pay big dividends in the end.
Another aspect that can prove beneficial is what types of alerts you choose to show users. Lexicomp has recently rolled out another aspect of drug-drug interaction within Lexi-Data called risk rating. By utilizing risk rating along with the more commonly known drug interaction severity, more impactful and actionable alerts can be provided to clinicians which will ultimately improve patient care and reduce alert fatigue for clinicians.
Whether you are building a complete EMR, ePrescribing application, or mobile medical app utilizing drug interaction software, proper integration of the data is the key. Taking the time and utilizing the right database that is easy to integrate and provides meaningful alerts will ultimately lead to a product you can be proud of.
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