McKesson rolls out CDS and CPOE systems

To help increase the accuracy and safety of medication prescribing for high-risk, complex patients, McKesson Provider Technologies has announced the rollout of its new Advanced Dosing functionality for Horizon Expert Orders, its clinical decision support (CDS) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system. The new capability is now offered as part of McKesson's Patient Care Advantage solution, which drives a "one patient, one care team, one plan" approach to health delivery, enabling hospitals to provide safer, more efficient care.

"We are constantly evaluating strategies that will help to eliminate medication errors, particularly in patients with complex dosing requirements," said Jeff Ferranti, director of pediatric informatics and computerized patient safety initiatives at Duke University Hospital, USA, one of the sites implementing this system. "We believe this Advanced Dosing solution has the potential to be of particular relevance in pediatric and neonatal units where specialized approaches to weight and age-based dosing are required and small miscalculations can cause significant problems," he noted.

For the very young, the very old and the very sick in particular, physicians must consider a myriad of complex factors when calculating dosing requirements for their patients. Studies have shown that in pediatrics, the most common type of medication error is a dosing error at the ordering stage. Advanced Dosing delivers patient-specific recommendations coupled with sophisticated dose calculators and rounding algorithms tightly tailored to the indication for the medication. The customized dosing guidelines are based on a combination of relevant criteria such as the patient's age, dosing weight, body surface area, renal function and diagnosis.