Computerized prescribing systems with medication indications deliver better outcomes

According to a study funded by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research on computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems, researchers created a model that incorporated drug indications into prescription ordering workflows which helped to improve clinicians’ efficiency and reduce prescribing errors compared with two leading commercial CPOE systems.

Current CPOE systems do not effectively support adding indications to prescriptions, suggests the research. But the CPOE system the study-team developed gave clinicians the option of starting with the indication and allowing the system to offer alternatives for common primary care problems such as poorly controlled hypertension, migraine prevention, gout flare and newly diagnosed diabetes. In addition to requiring fewer clicks and less time to complete orders, the prototype resulted in fewer errors.