The Critical Importance of Usability for CPOE Systems
Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) has shown some promise in enhancing patient safety. Many of today's CPOE solutions, however, have encountered barriers to success, in large part due to issues of user friendliness. To many clinicians, CPOE requires more steps, more interaction and more drug product ordering information, which they consider an undue burden. CPOE solutions must make the overall ordering process easier for the clinician to use and more efficient for the computer when managing drug content.
The Issue of Message Overload in CPOE
Much of the promise of CPOE lies in the alerts, reminders and clinical decision support that can help prevent errors. Many clinicians, however, have complained that CPOE systems overwhelm them with too much information. This over-alerting can damage usability and numb them so much that they miss truly critical messages.
Many CPOE alerts result from drug dosing problems, since ideally the system considers numerous variables in determining dose levels and frequencies. These alerts may interfere with order-building so much, though, that the clinician, out of frustration, may turn off all alerts—leaving the system vulnerable to undetected dosing errors.
One key element of a successful CPOE system is a database of pre-defined orders. The amount of time and effort required to create a "do-it-yourself" database of clinical drug content is often underestimated. Industry estimates show a typical investment of at least 2,000 hours of professional pharmacist time. To avoid the time and expense required to build such databases, healthcare organizations can leverage existing sources of pre-built, validated drug orders. These sources should also be responsible for maintaining the drug database—a critical task given the number of drugs currently available and the frequency of data changes.
As an added benefit, pre-defined orders can be codified to link to the rest of the drug database, and seamlessly transmitted to the appropriate departmental systems, such as pharmacy, and the eMAR.
Essential Building Blocks
By drawing on the following components, First DataBank sets the standard for providing context-relevant drug information for CPOE systems.
First DataBank's
National Drug Data File (NDDF) Plus is the leader in supplying comprehensive coverage of descriptive, pricing and clinical information on drugs. It encompasses medications approved by the FDA, plus commonly used over-the-counter drugs and information on herbals, nutraceuticals and dietary supplements. Comprehensive and up-to-date are the key concepts here, since drug content is dynamic and notoriously difficult to maintain. It's essential, therefore, that the drug database behind CPOE,
hospital pharmacy dispensing, and
eMAR applications be the most reliable in the industry. NDDF Plus is that database.
In addition to its in-depth drug information, NDDF Plus accommodates multiple user perspectives. Its
clinical decision-support modules provide healthcare professionals with a broad range of drug screening information at the point of care, to prevent ADEs, reduce drug-related expenses and improve the quality of patient care.
Our
OrderView Med Knowledge Base establishes an order-centric view of medications, to match how a physician naturally orders meds. It is designed specifically to simplify and speed up med ordering, and is ideal for closed-loop inpatient settings. It pioneers the concept of the "orderable med": drug content that enables clinicians to use their most common drug descriptions as "stepping stones" for completing medication orders in the fewest possible steps.
OrderView also provides common order components, including valid doses and frequencies; links orderables seamlessly to associated products on a formulary; supports dose adjustments for organ impairment; performs mg/kg calculations for final doses; handles pediatric orders; and provides translation for discharge scripts and patient instructions.
FREE OrderView Sample Orders Download