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How to break the traditional paper prescription? What is the technological secret behind electronic prescriptions?
With the rapid development of technology, electronic prescriptions (e-prescribing or e-Rx) have gradually replaced traditional paper prescriptions, which not only improves medical efficiency but also improves patients' medical experience. So, what kind of technological secrets are hidden behind electronic prescriptions?
Electronic prescribing not only improves prescription accuracy, but also enhances patient safety, significantly reducing the risk of medical errors.
Electronic prescribing is a computer-based process for electronically generating, transmitting, and filling medical prescriptions, often replacing paper and faxed prescriptions. With e-prescribing, doctors, assistants or pharmacists can use digital prescribing software to conveniently electronically transmit new prescriptions or renewal authorizations to community pharmacies or mail-order pharmacies.
The main functions of electronic prescriptions include patient identification, generating a complete list of active medications, viewing patient history data, ordering new medications and selecting a pharmacy. This system places great emphasis on accuracy and promotes informed decision-making by sharing prescription information with medical providers.
Electronic prescribing is designed to reduce the risks associated with traditional prescription writing, improving patient safety and overall quality of care.
Operational model of electronic prescription
Electronic prescribing systems typically consist of four basic components: physicians, transaction centers, pharmacies, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). The doctor logs into the system through authentication and uses the patient's personal information to look up the patient's medical records. After the prescription information is uploaded, it will be sent to the transaction center for confirmation, and then the patient's medication history and applicability information will be returned through the PBM.
When the pharmacy receives the electronic prescription, it will send a confirmation message back to the doctor. This not only reduces errors caused by handwritten prescriptions, but also effectively improves the efficiency of pharmacies.
Benefits of electronic prescriptions
Electronic prescriptions help improve health and reduce costs compared to paper prescriptions. This is reflected in many aspects:
- Reduce prescription and dispensing errors
- Speed up the prescription receiving process
- Avoid unnecessary drug interactions and adverse reactions
- Improve medication compliance
According to studies, electronic prescription systems can reduce prescription errors by up to 30%.
In addition, the electronic prescription system also provides powerful clinical decision support. Through system warnings and prompts, medical providers can better follow medication regulations when prescribing.
Improving patient convenience
Many patients often fail to take their medication on time due to the complexity of paper prescriptions, but the introduction of electronic prescriptions has greatly reduced the occurrence of this situation. Patients can access medications more easily electronically, improving medication adherence.
Challenges
Although electronic prescriptions bring many benefits, their promotion still faces challenges. Among them, cost is one of the biggest obstacles. Small clinics and healthcare workers in remote areas may have difficulty affording the system and its maintenance.
In addition, the challenges of managing change should not be underestimated during the transformation process. Medical workers need to adapt to new system processes, and high-frequency push alerts may cause users to turn off the alert function, which weakens the core value of the system.
With the popularization of electronic prescriptions, will future medical services further transform into a completely paperless medical system?
