Many EHR systems include tools that provide clinicians with information about interactions between medications, but they are fragmented and have no consistent set of standards, a study concluded.
The researchers from the University of Arizona in Phoenix found that drug-drug interaction clinical support tools use different terminology, are frequently cluttered with text and do not adhere to the same reporting standards. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, was supported by Cerner, Elsevier Clinical Solutions, Epocrates, athenahealth, First Databank, Truven Health Analytics and Wolters Kluwer.
The researchers recommended that seven core elements be included with drug-drug interaction decision support tools and be presented to all clinicians. Additionally, they recommended override rates should be eliminated or redesigned. Override rates have limited capability to evaluate the effectiveness of alerts, the researchers wrote.
The seven core elements include:
∙ The drugs involved
∙ Severity of the interaction
∙ The clinical consequences
∙ The mechanism of the interaction
∙ The contextual information and modifying factors
∙ Recommended actions for clinicians
∙ Evidence supporting the conclusion
The researchers also recommended four basic guidelines for alerts coming from drug-drug interaction clinical decision tools: a signal word indicating the severity of the interaction, hazard information, instructions on how to reduce risk of injury and specific clinical consequences if the risk is not averted.