The electronic medication administration record (eMAR) has gained a foothold in inpatient settings to support medication administration safety. With paper records prone to being lost, incomplete, or misread, the bedside nurse needs a fail-safe method to ensure that medications are administered correctly. Medication administration systems that integrate fully with computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and pharmacy systems should provide that fail-safe system, while improving efficiency. Even a standalone medication administration system is a vast improvement over paper medication administration records.
But for medication administration safety the eMAR is only as good as the drug database that supports it. First DataBank's National Drug Data File Plus (NDDF Plus) is the most comprehensive and up-to-date in the industry. Widely used in hospital systems throughout the country—a clear indication of the trust we've earned in our 25 years as a pioneering industry leader—we've built NDDF Plus from the ground up to offer each of the players in the drug therapy workflow clear and trustworthy drug information in language tailored to their specific clinical and practical needs.
Reducing Errors, Improving Hospital Efficiency
Within a hospital, drug therapies need to move quickly and accurately from the prescribing physician to the dispensing pharmacist and then to the bedside where the nurse typically administers the drug. As the medication administration safety check of last resort, ideally the nurse can access all available data on patient medications and their administration, and reconcile the physician's order with what the pharmacy has actually dispensed.
Innovative First DataBank modules allow the bedside nurse to achieve all those goals with remarkable ease and efficiency. With our OrderView Med Knowledge Base, nurses can see the exact order from the physician and then navigate to exactly the items that need to be administered in the context of patient records that prompt appropriate actions and alerts. Because we incorporate flexible categories for drug-drug, drug-allergy, and drug-food interactions, you can use a range of techniques to fine tune alerts, specifically for the nurse, without compromising patient safety. And our drug content also facilitates FDA-mandated bar code scanning.
In addition, if the system is a closed loop among CPOE, pharmacy dispensing, and bedside charting, First DataBank facilitates specific views on the medication universe for the pharmacist, physician and nurse.
Essential Building Blocks
In short, by drawing on the following components, First DataBank sets the standard for providing context-relevant drug information for eMAR systems.
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, dietary supplements, and medical devices. 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 medication administration systems be the most reliable in the industry. NDDF Plus is that database. It's essential for the move to bar coding, because without a single package of every product on file, you're going to have efficiency gaps when a product is not in the system. NDDF Plus also offers you the most efficient ways of navigating to exactly the information you need for the task at hand—for more informed decision-making, fewer medication errors and increased patient safety.
Multiple Access Points (MAPs) are basic drug identifiers that enable all users to zero in on First DataBank drug information quickly and efficiently within their normal workflow.
Our OrderView Med Knowledge Base establishes an order-centric view to match how a physician naturally orders meds. It is designed specifically to simplify and speed up medication 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 dose increments and order sentences; links orderables seamlessly to associated products on a formulary and supports dose adjustments for organ impairment; performs mg/kg calculations for final doses; and handles pediatric orders, both inpatient and outpatient. Click here for a FREE OrderView Sample Orders Download.
Our Prescriber Order Entry Module also allows your system to incorporate a convenient, easy-to-use pick list of clinically valid dosage prescriptions specific to drug, route of administration and medical condition.
Our clinical modules for drug-drug, drug-allergy, and drug-food interactions offer exceptionally flexible ways for you to create applications that categorize and display potentially harmful interactions. First DataBank's expert clinical staff separates the interactions into highly granular categories, and then carefully and consistently reviews each module to create subsets of the most clinically relevant drug interactions. This reduces "noise" that less relevant interactions create, and eliminates the need for clinicians to spend undue time researching.
