In case you have not seen these articles from December 2005 AJHP, I wanted to briefly mention them.In case you have not seen these articles from December 2005 AJHP, I wanted to briefly mention them.

In the Medication Use Technology section of the journal, two articles from our colleagues in pharmacy practice review their experiences with implementation of technology.

In one hospital network, BBS was used without implementation of CPOE (computerized provider order entry). The authors mention this as a potential variable to their credit. I was surprised to see just how few actionable warnings the pharmacists were able to act on. I think the limitations were two fold:
Poor implementation of the IT aspects of the technology. This includes interface and application configuration. Many times these installs are rushed, and testing is a small annoyance that is barely addressed.
Secondly, the results the system generates are just not targeted enough to cut down on pharmacist review time and justify the added safety benefits of the system.


No discredit to the authors. They likely did the best job they could with the software/hardware they were given. In fact, this might be as good as most hospitals can hope for. I always try to learn from others and their experiences, and this provides some good lessons.

Just because technology promises, does not mean it will deliver. It takes human resources to make things happen, and the machine is only as good as humans design it to be.