First DataBank today announced an upcoming suite of medication knowledge bases for computerized physician order entry (CPOE), designed to allow medication orders to be completed in the fewest possible steps. The first of these is OrderView™ Med Knowledge Base—next-generation drug content optimized for integration into CPOE systems. According to Virginia Halsey, Product Management Director for NDDF Plus™, the goal of OrderView is “two clicks to CPOE.” Compatible with NDDF Plus, OrderView was “built from the ground up” to support emerging CPOE applications.

Speaking at the HIMSS 2005 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Dallas, Halsey said, “These new concepts move the fundamental building blocks of med orders to an order-centric representation—one that mimics the way physicians intuitively think of meds when they’re writing orders by hand.” These representations are tightly linked to product-centric concepts for dispensing and administering meds, she said. First DataBank’s highly intuitive medication “orderables” reduce the number of steps needed to complete an order. At the same time, Halsey indicated, they produce short, manageable lists of appropriate drug dose, frequency, duration and other constraints. The net effect: “Clinicians can complete a medication order in as few as two mouse clicks.”

In use, these “orderable” concepts are expected to simplify and speed up medication ordering. As presented by George Robinson, Vice President, Knowledge Base Development, the following scenario illustrates how this works. First, a system developer creates an application using OrderView, a drug knowledge base structured to correspond to the various ways users think about drugs. Then when physicians use the developer’s application, they view only those drug concepts they would think of intuitively, such as drug name and dose. A physician, for example, who wants to order a blood thinner for a patient might think: “Warfarin 7mg PO.” This reflects the order-centric view.

Subsequently, when the pharmacy is filling that order, they’re presented with formulation-level detail—all the attributes of a packaged, dispensable product they need to fill the order most efficiently; for example, “Warfarin 2mg tablet + Warfarin 5mg tablet”—the product-centric view, which meets the need to record, dispense and administer this same order. “Typically,” Robinson noted, “physicians do not want to concern themselves with product details such as how many units (tablets, etc.) should be ordered to make up a particular dose.” Formulation-level details, they believe, should be part of the pharmacist’s expertise.

Compared with most current practices, this medication ordering process is quite streamlined, noted David Manin, Director of Marketing. “It’s the shortest, most intuitive path to a med order. It starts with the physician’s view of the drug universe, which means less clicking and scrolling for them. Yet it delivers all the common order components, including valid dose increments and order sentences. And it links seamlessly to the right product on a formulary for dispensing.” Manin further contended that these new medication concepts would provide “just the right fit” of drug data for CPOE, pharmacy and nurse order entry. “OrderView gives developers the medication content they need today to leapfrog their competition.”

About First Data Bank
First DataBank, a subsidiary of The Hearst Corporation, is the leading provider of electronic drug information to the healthcare industry. We pioneered the concept of creating executable drug knowledge that’s designed to be relevant from the perspectives of multiple end users. For more than two decades, we’ve partnered with information system developers to deliver proven knowledge bases for integration into a wide range of applications all across the healthcare continuum, with particular expertise in clinical decision support within the workflow. Together with our development partners, First DataBank helps reduce the incidence of medication errors and adverse drug events, which promises to lower healthcare costs and improve patient care.