E-prescription software vendors must up the ante, says Ovum

KUALA LUMPUR: Vendors of electronic prescribing software need to up their game and improve the design of their systems, if widespread adoption by hospitals and surgeries is to be reached, according to Australia-based Ovum.

In a report released July 5, Ovum said that while e-prescribing systems, which cut costs and inaccuracies associated with paper prescriptions, were bringing fundamental changes to the healthcare sector in the US and Europe, uptake had been low.

The report stated that a major cause of resistance to adoption is that healthcare practices, especially those in the private sector, believe that the IT solutions currently available were not sophisticated enough to integrate well with other IT systems.

It also claimed that the interfaces of some systems were not user-friendly enough and were viewed as cumbersome by healthcare professionals.

The author of the report, Andrew Brosnan said E-prescribing not only delivered cost savings, but also improved patient care and reduced the number of prescription errors.

It also streamlines the dispensing process for patients, and provides practitioners with medication histories, reducing fraud, he said.

“However, despite the many benefits, actual use of the solutions remains low, particularly in the US.

“The high upfront costs and patient confidentiality fears are two of the reasons for this, but a major cause of resistance to the adoption is a pervasive sense that the IT solutions currently available have not as yet achieved the level of sophistication that will be required to mesh seamlessly with other IT progammes and systems. This is of great concern to prescribers,” said Brosnan.

Conversely, in Australia adoption of e-prescribing solutions began in the 1990 and studies indicate that up to 90% of physicians use e-prescribing solutions, he said.

However, data quality in Australia remains an issue due to the lack of standards, he said.

Brosnan said that to deliver on the full potential of e-prescribing solutions, vendors in Australia should adhere to the framework for e-health interoperability set forth by the National e-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA). NEHTA has published standards catalogs for clinical documents and messaging on their website.

“Physicians also say that cumbersome interfaces and difficulty recalling patient medical records need to be improved as they increase the time it takes to write a prescription, affecting the value they hold over paper-based prescriptions,” he said.