E-prescribing - Telepharmacy

Advances in information and communication technology and in particularly the development of new mobile devices with user-friendly interfaces, broadband communication and wireless networks technology, offer new approaches to encouraging physician adoption of new technology applications. According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) study “To Error is human: building a safer health system”, over one million preventable medication errors are made each year. A significant number of these errors result in serious complications in citizen health status and death. Thus, prescriber’s handwriting is frequently cited as a common cause of medication errors. As a result, there is high level of interest in the development of electronic prescribing. E-prescribing, as a basic component of a telepharmacy system, is an electronic data entry system will not only replace the traditional manual ordering and prescriptions management system but it will also complicate the automation of medication dispensing process. Upper goal of such a system is the automation of inpatient and outpatient prescribing process by reengineering of pharmaceutical care provision in order to reduce the cost and risk of the medication errors. The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) supports strongly electronic prescribing. A recent, very important initiative is referred to the application of Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) system in hospitals. CPOE is a computerized physician orders management system, which support physician operations, such as prescribing. Three major companies like Advance PCS, Merck – Medco and Express Scripts have been parts of the RxHub Consortium to develop standards and to facilitate the communication between physicians and pharmacies through the electronic transmission of prescriptions and medication information.