Limitations of e-Prescribing Standards

The following is an important guest post from Dr. Marvin Harper, CMIO at Boston Children's Hospital, identifying a gap in e-prescribing standards:Why am I guest writing a blog post here?   As a practicing pediatrician and CMIO at Boston Children’s Hospital I am particularly sensitive to specific limitations of current e-prescribing standards.Being able to write and route prescriptions electronically provides many advantages over the handwritten paper prescription process that inherently uses families as couriers.  Nonetheless the current standards for e-prescribing have created a void that permits limitations in certified vendor software on both the prescribing and pharmacy receiving side. The result is that our patients are not yet benefiting from the full potential of eprescribing. Additional national standards for electronic prescription transmission are needed to provide the common ground needed by software vendors at each stage of the prescription life cycle.The core elements to consider when writing a prescription are the name of the medication, the dose form (e.g., capsules, tablets, extended release tablets, liquids), the amount of medication the patient should take at each dose, the dose frequency (e.g., once, twice or three times per day) and the duration of time for the patient to take this medication.Currently there are no standards for provision, transmission, receipt or display of weight within electronic prescriptions. To prescribe the correct quant...
Source: Life as a Healthcare CIO - Category: Technology Consultants Source Type: blogs