Potential Solution

Improving medication safety by cloud technology: Progression and value-added applications in Taiwan. International Journal of Medical Informatics

Posted on by Ryan J Tran
Study type/ Setting Methods Outcomes Recommendations Source
Prospective intervention design

 

Setting: Outpatient

 

 

 - PharmaCloud is a new technical platform adopted by the National Health Insurance Administration of Taiwan to collect patients’ medical information via cloud technology - The system provides instant access to detailed cloud-based pharmacy claims data from different healthcare facilities for the past 3 months with a lag time of 2 days; it enables healthcare providers to obtain a patient’s medication information via a secured internet portal - Patients were assigned to the PharmaCloud group and the non-PharmaCloud group in the outpatient setting, and then compared their medication usage and expenditure - After the application of PharmaCloud, the average number of prescribed drug items significantly decreased.

- Intra-hospital medication duplication rates also decreased.

 - The implementation of cloud technology improved patient medication safety while also controlling overall drug expenditure. Liao C-Y et al. (2019)
Liao C-Y, Wu M-F, Poon S-K, et al. Improving medication safety by cloud technology: Progression and value-added applications in Taiwan. International Journal of
Medical Informatics. 2019;126:65-71. doi:10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2019.03.012

Role of pharmacist led home medication review in community setting and the preparation of medication list.

Posted on by Ryan J Tran
Study type/ Setting Methods Outcomes Recommendations Source
Cross sectional interventional study

 

Setting: Community

 

 

 - The study was conducted to identify, prevent and resolve potential medication-related problems, optimize pharmacotherapy and

assist in achieving better health outcomes for patients at home through Home Medicines Review (HMR)

- HMR is a patient-focused, meticulous and collaborative health care service provided by pharmacists in the community setting.

- Study was conducted for a period of 6 months in 85 patients where discrepancies of the prescriptions, knowledge gap of the patients, use of other medication and storage conditions of medicines were evaluated

 - The patient had a lack of knowledge in factors like the name of the drug (34%), the reason for taking the medication (27%), etc.

- Drug interaction was a primary concern main discrepancy found in majority of the prescriptions.

- Around 32% of the population experienced ADR on taking the medication and among the patients interviewed, 64% of them didn’t use any OTC drugs along with prescribed drugs.

- Around 60 of the interviewed patients stored multiple drugs in a same container and 52 of the patient’s medicines had illegible labels.

 - Qualified pharmacists can play a major role in improving the appropriateness of prescribing, preventing medication related adverse events. Chandrasekhar D et al. (2019)

 

No open access version available
Chandrasekhar D, Joseph E, Ghaffoor FA, Thomas HM. Role of pharmacist led home medication review in community setting and the preparation of medication list.
Clinical Epidemiology and Global Health. 2019;7(1):66-70. doi:10.1016/j.cegh.2018.01.002