Identifying an important drug interaction

When it comes to designing a new product, how intuitive or easy the product is to use has a huge impact on its success.  The same concept holds true for clinical information systems.  In order to achieve meaningful use of an EHR, it must be something that is first and foremost, "usable".  A usable system should not just provide clinical decision alerts, but rather meaningful drug interaction or duplicate therapy alerts and clinically appropriate dosage range screening.  The onus of creating a usable system ultimately falls on the shoulders of the EHR vendors, however they are at the mercy of the data available for use. 

For example, if you are designing a system that is designed to accommodate pediatric patient care, you must have reliable, valid pediatric dosing information powering that system.  If your system is using data that does not understand the nuances of pediatric dosing, how can it be expected to provide meaningful screening that will ultimately improve patient safety?  That is the question that EHR vendors should be asking when selecting the data source for their systems.