The article corresponds to a study aimed at analyzing the effectiveness and efficiency of modern Pharmacy clinical decision-support (CDS) software, which contain and consist of drug-drug interaction (DDI) information. It is widely believed and accepted that these systems and software empower the pharmacists’ to detect clinically significant interactions in a much more refined and improved manner. But off-late studies have shown that these systems are not as effective and efficient as recognized and may miss some vital interaction. The article puts across a detailed and elaborate study to verify such claims about the performance of CDS systems or programs.
The study was conducted at pharmacies across Arizona over a period of one year, from December 2008 to November 2009. The study was conducted in 64 pharmacies. Through this period of one year, researchers regularly paid visits to these pharmacies to analyze CDS software’s strength and ability to detect DDIs and hence gauge their performance. To check if the systems recognized important interactions, a fictitious patient’s orders were added which consisted of 18 medications including 19 pairs, with 13 very significant DDIs.
The results from the study were indeed shocking and appalling since they pointed to discrepancies and ineffectiveness of these systems. Out of the 64 pharmacies, only 28% could track and identify eligible interactions and non-interactions. Though the median percentage of correct and appropriate DDI responses painted a less dismal scenario at 89%, it still was sufficient for the study to conclude that the pharmacy clinical decision-support systems performed less optimally than believed. The study rightly called a comprehensive and complete system-wide improvements in such systems to improve their efficiency and to make them more potent and able to detect and identify DDIs.
Works Cited
Saverno, R Kim, et al. Ability of pharmacy clinical decision-support software to alert users about clinically important drug-drug interactions. The University of Arizona, US: 2010. Print.
