The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7200 p777
1 June 2002

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United Kingdom Clinical Pharmacy Association summary

Forge partners with patients to improve safety

Health care professionals owe it to patients to become partners in their care and to design and deliver that care as well as they can, in terms of patient safety, said Dr Henri Manasse, chief executive officer, American Society of Health-System Pharmacists.

Delivering the Aventis lecture, Dr Manasse said that information technology and automation should support, not supplant, the human operator, reducing errors caused by lapses in memory and vigilance, miscalculation and misreading of drug dosages and similarities in medicines names and packaging. "Technology should support decisions without introducing errors."

He commented that computerised systems "cannot truly be of use unless they are properly integrated with each other, with the setting where they are used, and with the people who use them". He also said that although computerised decision support, provider order entry and alert systems have been shown to prevent significant numbers of adverse drug events, new types of error can occur. Computers can lock up and deny access to data and drugs, systems for pharmacy and prescribing may be unable to interface without manual data re-entry and automated infusion pumps may default to a setting that releases a dangerous dose of an analgesic.