Identifying an important drug interaction

There have been thousands of articles written discussing why EMR adoption rates have been so low and why physicians especially have been resistant to moving into the electronic age.  Little return on the initial investment, lack of efficiency in the system and no improvements in patient outcomes have been listed as reasons for reduced adoption rates.

One key element to the lack of efficiency and little improvement in patient care is due to the number of alerts that are generated when trying to use these systems.  As a pharmacist, I enter in hundreds of medication orders in a shift and it is rare that I do so without receiving an alert from my HIS telling me about a drug interaction or duplicate therapy.  These alerts although technically accurate, often involve medicine interactions that are so minor or irrelevant to hospital medicine.  

If an HIS truly wants to improve patient care and become an indispensable part of medicine, it must provide clinical decision support that can accurately and appropriately give clinicians therapeutic alerts that are relevant and can help improve patient care.  That is the goal of Lexi-Data.  For more information about Lexi-Data, check out www.lexi.com.