First Databank, a provider of clinical drug knowledge that helps improve medication-related decisions and patient outcomes has released FDB OrderKnowledge®Canada, a pre-built medication ordering drug knowledge base specifically designed to help make computerized provider order entry (CPOE) applications more intuitive and user-friendly.
Although there has been significant federal investment since 2001 to spur EHR adoption across Canada, deployment of CPOE applications is still relatively low. Many CPOE solutions have encountered barriers to success in large part due to issues of system usability, especially with drug ordering. Physicians are reluctant to use CPOE solutions due to awkward user interfaces, increased ordering time, decreased interaction with patients and nurses, and a lack of integration into their workflow.
Now, with more widespread adoption of EHR systems across Canada, the widely-reported safety benefits of CPOE and e-prescribing can now be realized. With FDB OrderKnowledge Canada, clinicians are able to specify patient-specific medication orders quickly and easily because this drug knowledge is specifically designed to meet the unique challenges of CPOE with built-in drug concepts and identifiers that optimize system functionality and navigation capabilities. Organizations will also save tremendous amounts of time and money by cutting back on the thousands of staff hours required to prep general-purpose medication orders to work within their CPOE system.
“Building the medication ordering content that supports CPOE applications is a significant task for CPOE implementers, whether or not they build a homegrown system or purchase one from a vendor,” said Lisa Geller, senior product manager, FDB. “Without an infrastructure and content collection process in place, it’s extremely difficult to research and rigorously test the content efficiently in a clinical environment,” she continued. “With OrderKnowledge, FDB’s dedicated team of clinical pharmacists and quality management professionals do the research and testing to ensure CPOE success.”
In addition, FDB OrderKnowledge Canada helps to promote better outcomes by providing validated dose and frequency selections for a particular drug. It promotes the concept of pre-built “orderable medications” that enable clinicians to arrive at their order in the fewest possible steps, an identified need of many CPOE system users. The content also supports dose adjustments for organ impairment, mg/kg calculations and rounding for final doses, IV to PO conversions, and pediatric and discharge orders.
With OrderKnowledge Canada, clinicians are guided to a constrained list of patient-appropriate orders instead of the more common “dead-end” workflow where the clinician spends time creating a medication order only to receive a safety warning at the end that causes the clinician to start over. This helps minimize alert fatigue, a problem too often associated with clinical decision support.