For over 25 years, First DataBank has been a pioneer in hospital pharmacy dispensing. Our renowned drug database—the
—is a key component of most hospital pharmacy systems in the United States and Canada. We supply integrated, actionable drug information that's context relevant, to help ensure proper drug dispensing and patient safety; and to support cost containment.
In recent decades, the clinical and technical demands on hospital pharmacy dispensing have grown dramatically. In addition, the sheer volume of drug orders, the complexity of drug therapy and the potential adverse effects of even a "small" dispensing error work together to create a high-pressure environment—one that can work against improving patient safety.
To meet these increasingly difficult challenges, First DataBank creates drug-information products designed from the ground up for embedding directly into pharmacy workflow. This provides the hospital pharmacy with easy access to the finest clinical screening modules for
; and a host of other drug-use problems that must be detected to help prevent adverse drug events (ADE's).
Embedding these databases directly into the workflow enhances their usability, by eliminating the need to move out of the workflow to access additional information. For example, when allergy pick lists are presented, the user can immediately drill down to find more information, if needed.
further provide basic drug identifiers that enable you to zero in on the right drug information quickly within your normal workflow — from clinical screening to billing, purchasing, and inventory management. And you can take advantage of First DataBank's proprietary
system to revise clinical information at as general or specific a level as necessary.
Avoiding Message Overload
During drug screening — whether in conjunction with dispensing, CPOE or other information-system touch points—First DataBank modules produce tiered messages and alerts, notifying the pharmacist of potential drug-interaction problems. These alerts not only help prevent ADE's, they also save pharmacists time by guiding them to drug-therapy practices considered in the professional literature to be safe.
Since these screening modules assign severity levels to potential interactions, the system can present the pharmacist with a whole range of alert types, tailored to indicate the seriousness of the interaction. Messages can be fine-tuned to indicate "conflicting evidence exists" or "contraindicated in some patients." They can be hard or soft stops, and interruptive or not, and placed prominently on the user's screen as pop-ups, or relegated to a sidebar. These emphasis cues help the pharmacist quickly decide the action to be taken in response to a particular alert. In addition, the granularity of NDDF drug identifiers allows alert messages to be limited to just those that a user organization has determined to be necessary.
Clinical Decision Support
With drug information continually growing and changing, care providers find it increasingly difficult to keep up with current best practices. First DataBank provides a variety of tiered information tools to support providers with precisely the amount of information they need for the task at hand. These tools range from brief alerts and messages to detailed drug monograph summaries.
When pharmacists are working in high-pressure environments, where time-saving tools are required, they are shown brief — but essential — "snippets" of clinical information. If they require more detail, they can "drill down" to professional drug reference information, including the highly regarded
AHFS Drug Information® monographs.
First DataBank further offers
patient-education monographs,
drug-drug interactions and other alerts, written at a consumer level,
prioritized patient-counseling messages and
prescription warning labels. These tools can both save pharmacist and nurse time, and help encourage patients to follow their medication-therapy plans.
Drug Identification and Tracking
To support pharmacy needs for correctly dispensing what physicians order, we've created the industry's most comprehensive database of
drug images and
drug imprints. These databases enable you to check the physical traits of about-to-be-dispensed products, and reconcile any differences with med orders. They can also help identify a patient's own meds for medication reconciliation.
First DataBank's
Tall Man Plus database also helps prevent dispensing errors caused by look-alike and sound-alike drug product names. And we accommodate bar-code solutions by enabling developers to link drug Universal Product Codes with our National Drug Code (NDC) identifiers.
Formulary and Inventory Management
First DataBank's highly specific drug classification categories readily accommodate formulary management requirements. Our solutions also support savvy inventory management via drug identifiers that allow you to quickly and easily compare packaging and prices of similar products, and gauge their availability. Those same drug identifiers help you effectively balance inventory levels with service needs.
Essential Building Blocks
For decades, First DataBank has set the standards for providing context-relevant drug information for efficient integration into hospital pharmacy systems.
NDDF Plus provides a powerful and reliable source of drug content for any electronic dispensing system. As such, it plays an essential role as hospitals continue to improve the safety and efficiency of pharmacy dispensing operations.
NDDF Plus is known as 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 products 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.
The number of drugs on the market has grown exponentially in recent years, not to mention the challenges they present due to daily changes in pricing information. It's essential, therefore, that the drug knowledge base behind pharmacy dispensing systems be the most reliable in the industry. NDDF Plus is that knowledge base.