Lexi-Comp's Answer to Adverse Drug Events

Now more than ever, your customers need an EHR system they can rely on to help them enhance patient safety, boost productivity and qualify for meaningful use incentive dollars.

Now more than ever, your customers need an EHR system they can rely on to help them enhance patient safety, boost productivity and qualify for meaningful use incentive dollars. Lexicomp provides superior drug reference and decision support data that, when implemented into your system, will give pharmacists, physicians and nurses the functionality they need to enhance patient outcomes at the point-of-care.

• Drug Interaction Data - we'll provide your system data that enables clinicians to screen for medication interactions, including drug-allergy, drug-drug and drug-food
• RxNorm Mapping - we promote interoperability through mapping to industry standard RxNorm
• Drug Reference Data - integrate drug reference information, such as drug images and black box warnings, into your system
• Patient Education - we provide patient education information that allows users to generate patient-specific handouts for medications, conditions and procedures
• Dose Range Checking - we provide data that enables clinicians to receive dosing alerts for medications, including limits for pediatric patients
• Links to Lexicomp Online - allows users of your system to link directly to Lexicomp's reference information within Lexicomp Online
• Get Market-ready Sooner - designed for easy implementation, our intuitive database design will help you seamlessly integrate complex databases into your system

The healthcare industry is ever-changing. That's why you need drug reference content and data that is easy to implement, comprehensive and affordable. 

• Improved decision making at the point-of-care – by linking directly to our reference content from within an HIS system, clinicians have access to the most current drug information available – enabling them to improve decision-making and enhance patient safety
• Easy implementation – due to our intuitive database design and table naming across multiple database environments (Oracle®, SQL Server® and MySQL®), developers can quickly and seamlessly integrate complex databases into your system, making your product market-ready sooner
• Superior customer service – our technical experts are available to answer your questions quickly, and provide implementation services designed to meet your needs
• Flexible, lightweight APIs – our APIs will make the development of complex systems faster and more efficient, without the need for separate servers or specialized hardware

I recently came across an interesting article on ABC News that argues that accidentally giving children wrong doses of over the counter medicines could be a form of child abuse.

Although this debate will likely not be solved without the involvement of lawyers and much more research on the topic, I couldn't help but wonder if something COULD be done to help prevent the accidental misuse of commonly used medications for children. For one, children have unique needs when it comes to drug dosing. Secondly, in order to properly prescribe appropriate doses of medications to children, pediatric practices must seek to implement EMRs into their practice settings that are pediatric-specific and specialize in providing drug information that meets the unique needs of pediatricians. 

Luckily there’s Lexi-Comp.

When integrated into an EMR or various other healthcare applications, Lexi-Data – Lexi-Comp’s comprehensive drug database – provides pediatricians the clinical decision support they need to enhance pediatric care. In addition to providing drug interaction software checking, drug-allergy checking and dose range checking, Lexi-Comp can provide pediatric-specific drug data and pediatric dosage calculators that enable EMRs to meet the special needs of pediatric practices. In the end, pediatricians will be better equipped to improve patient care and help decrease the occurrence of accidental “child abuse.”

Paper prescriptions will soon be a thing of the past.

Thanks to federal IT incentives as well as an increasing demand by physicians, pharmacies and payers for increased efficiency and safety, the healthcare industry will likely soon see electronic prescribing options completely replace the sloppy, handwritten prescriptions that have dominated the industry for so long. With more and more healthcare providers implementing EMR systems into their practice settings, the popularity and demand of drug data solutions for e-prescribing applications is on the rise. Some of the benefits of e-prescribing include: fewer medication errors and improved patient outcomes; streamlined prescription writing through automated data entry process; increased patient safety; more efficient refill request processes; and clinical decision support to help provide drug-allergy notifications and detect harmful drug-drug interactions.

In order for a physician, pharmacy or payer to utilize the e-prescribing component of their EMR, their system must be Surescripts certified, ensuring the software sends and receives electronic information in accordance with industry standards. Due to Lexi-Comp’s strategic partnerships with e-prescribing vendors that use Lexi-Comp’s clinical decision support information (drug interacting software checking, drug-allergy checking, dose range checking, etc.), Lexi-Comp can help end users obtain the functionality needed to achieve certification of their e-prescribing system.  

Learn more about how Lexi-Comp can help EMRs develop software for e-prescribing.

Choosing a drug database vendor can be a daunting task. But with Lexi-Data, it doesn't have to be.

With our comprehensive drug data content, APIs and personalized customer service, we’ll simplify your decision and help you quickly integrate drug databases into your system – decreasing the time it takes for your product to hit the market and increasing your bottom line.

Your Complete Drug Database Solution

Comprehensive, reliable and current, Lexi-Data – our transactional drug information database – can provide your EMR the core drug data content you need for drug names (brand and generic), updated NDCs, drug interaction checking, drug allergy checking, therapeutic duplication, dose range checking, Schedule II medications and more.

Intuitive Database Architecture Design with Lexi-Data’s APIs

With Lexi-Data’s APIs (Java, .Net), developing complex systems won’t seem so complicated. Flexible and lightweight, our APIs will actually make the development process faster and more efficient. The time it takes your developers to integrate complex database systems into your EMR will drastically decrease, and your product will be market-ready sooner.

Superior Customer Service

When you choose Lexi-Data, you’ll receive first-class, personalized service from the get-go. Our technical experts will provide implementation services designed to meet your needs and answer your questions quickly.

Try Lexi-Data now!

 

 

The Food and Drug Administration launched a new website Tuesday that is part of an initiative to increase patient and healthcare providers’ access to drug safety information after a drug is approved. By evaluating medical studies, clinical trials and adverse drug events reported during product development, the site, Postmarketing Drug Safety Evaluations, aims to “improve the transparency of information about drugs and provide patients and healthcare providers better access to information about drugs.” So far, 26 recently approved drugs have been evaluated on the new FDA site. According to an article published Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal, the FDA didn’t find any adverse events that hadn’t already been reported in those 26 drugs’ labels.

The new FDA site represents a federal initiative to provide streamlined access to drug safety information and enhance patient outcomes. Although this is a step forward in decreasing adverse drug events and empowering patients and healthcare providers with more detailed drug safety information, it isn’t enough.

What healthcare providers need is access to Lexi-Comp’s drug information databases and interaction screening tools. When integrated into an EMR or various other healthcare applications, Lexi-Data – Lexi-Comp’s comprehensive drug database – provides healthcare providers with the clinical decision support data they need to improve patient safety and decrease the occurrence of adverse drug events. With drug-drug, drug-allergy and duplicate therapy interaction screenings, Lexi-Data allows the end user to be better-equipped to make sound decisions and positively affect patient safety.

During a recent international workshop at Marbach Castle in Lake Constance, Germany, more than 60 industry experts from over 11 countries participated in discussions regarding current guidelines in Europe and the USA on medicine interactions. While experts recognize the need for more research in the discipline, all agreed that the current guidelines – the European Medicines Agency (EMA) published a draft of the revised guideline just before the May 30 conference, and the FDA’s existing drug interaction guideline was published in 2006 – need changed.

The EMA’s most recent draft of their drug interaction guideline was discussed in detail at the workshop. Changes to the new guideline include the inclusion of transporter-based drug-drug interactions as well as interactions with OTC drugs, like herbal drugs, and food. The EMA expects to finalize the newest version by the end of 2011. In the U.S., the FDA is discussing making changes to the four-year-old guideline, but a new draft is yet to be published.

This workshop highlighted the increasing need for more research and scientific data on adverse drug events, especially now that the complexity and number of drug interactions is increasing. What the experts at this workshop didn't discuss, however, was how electronic drug interaction screening tools, like those included in Lexi-Comp’s vast product range, can greatly increase healthcare providers’ ability to increase patient safety and improve outcomes.

Although the verdict is still out regarding current drug-drug interaction guidelines in Europe and the USA, one this is clear: to avoid adverse drug events, clinicians must have access to clinical decision support information, such as drug interaction and alerts screening tools.