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Taiwan Researchers Build Database to Help Doctors Avoid Prescription Errors
A university professor in Taiwan has developed a computer database of common medications to help doctors avoid potentially disastrous misdiagnoses.
Jack Li, a professor in the Graduate Institute of Biomedical Informatics at Taipei Medical College, joined researchers to comb a National Health Insurance Bureau for prescriptions written at major hospitals around Taiwan, according to a report by Business Next.
An analysis of 700 million prescriptions revealed common medication combinations and those to be avoided. For example, steroids can cause stomach acidity and are generally paired with antacid medication to combat that side effect.
Li’s team later used those findings to create a set of recommended hospital guidelines called Advanced Electronic Safety of Prescriptions. A doctor or pharmacist using the guidelines could vet prescriptions with their computers to see whether a proposed mix of medications would cause problems.
In Taiwan, Li estimates about 17 million wrongful prescriptions are written a year. If the average citizen makes 15 doctor visits a year, they probably generate 34 million prescriptions annually with about 5% of them wrong, close to the global average.
"Medication errors are an important global issue as human nature is to make mistakes,” Li told Business Next. “As long as the quantity of prescriptions is large, there will be a certain percentage of mistakes.”
An April 20 Business Next article noted a hospital in New Taipei City that mistakenly administered a muscle relaxant as a hepatitis B vaccine a decade ago. An infant died. In another case, a patient who went to a Taipei hospital after being bitten by a dog was accidentally given potassium instead of penicillin, leading to a heart attack.
Li, along with 15 full time professors and eight part-time professors in his medical informatics graduate program, hope to correct these errors.
A first its kind in Taiwan, the program promotes research and discoveries in medical technology as well as participation in international conferences.
The most common error in healthcare is when a doctor writes the wrong prescription, as pharmacists have little chance of correcting it, Li said. He attributes error rates to the volume of prescriptions written.
To test the accuracy of the guidelines, Li’s team worked with the university’s teaching hospital for two years in 10 departments covering 60 physicians and about 40,000 prescriptions.
The group found its system could flag 50% to 80% of inaccurate prescriptions. Approval of the system among physicians rose from 40% to 80% over the trial period of two years.
Heart and kidney diseases often generate improper prescriptions because the patients are generally older and may have multiple chronic illnesses. Those conditions can cause medications to conflict with one another. Pediatricians have reported fewer bad prescriptions because their patients are younger, without multiple illnesses.
Li’s list of rules fit a definition of artificial intelligence, which refers to human-like decision making done by computers.
But Li doesn’t foresee artificial intelligence taking over from human doctors in the near future. Artificial intelligence and other technological advances, he said, will help doctors do their jobs better.
News source is from Business Next.
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