Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) System

The best available evidence indicates that although a sizeable percentage of Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) in hospitals and outpatient settings are preventable, relatively few medical errors are detected using today's common but relatively ineffective paper-based detection methods.

It's estimated that between 30% and 60% of cancer patients receive some form of chemotherapy. Systemic treatment (chemotherapy) is complex to manage and has a narrow therapeutic range: if the dosage is too low the patient will not get the benefits of the treatment; if the dosage is too high it may be toxic and potentially fatal. Yet despite this complexity in cancer care, chemotherapy and other systemic therapies are largely managed by paper-based systems.

MedSym is in the forefront of using electronic technologies to reduce the likelihood of prescribing errors through the development a CPOE system specific to medical oncology and hematology.

Working in conjunction with clinicians, MedSym developed a CPOE system unique to the cancer setting, called HemOncProEHR CPOE. This CPOE system for oncology eliminates the scenario where a harmful drug error can occur because of incorrect reading of handwriting or incorrect calculation of dosage.

HemOncProEHR CPOE provides physicians with a menu of medication protocols from regimens that are specifically created by physicians, pharmacists and nurses: complete with default doses and a range of potential doses for each medication. It also ensures that all drug orders are legible and can display patient-specific, relevant laboratory results on the screen at the time of ordering. It can also check for drug-allergy contradictions and drug-drug interactions. HemOncProEHR also flags drug allergies, drug-drug interactions, or drug-disease interactions when medications are ordered, thus assisting clinicians in making the most appropriate clinical decisions at the point of care.

Impressive cost savings have been demonstrated when a CPOE intervention is used in conjunction with such clinical decision support systems as:

• Using the less expensive medication within a class of drugs, or using a lower dose or a lower frequency, when such suggestions are supported by oncology based medical literature
• Using appropriate laboratory tests
• Encouraging patients' placement on critical pathways or science-based treatment guidelines

The HemOncPro system provides a solution for the four distinct stages of the drug ordering-delivery system:

• Physician ordering
• Authorization and verification
• Pharmacy dispensing and delivery
• Nurse administration to the patient