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Wants to collate information
Hospitals, patients' GPs and the home-care service all update their own medication card for each patient. But the information saved on these cards cannot simply be shared with others in the public health service.
Patients thus risk getting incorrect dosages, or medications that cause complications when combined with other medications.
Safety for the patient
Eli Larsen at the Norwegian Centre for Telemedicine (NST) has been working with electronic medication cards since 2004. She has received a great deal of feedback from staff in the health sector indicating that there is a pressing need for better information about which medications patients are receiving.
"Studies show that there may be a difference of more than 80 per cent in the information when you compare the medication cards that are available for each patient," she says.
Through a new PhD project, she will be involved in reducing this problem. The researchers will build up a local database, which will be linked to patient records and medication cards.
These systems will then communicate with each other through this database, so that the patients' various medication cards are automatically updated when changes are made in the records.
The plan is to connect several of the GP practices in Tromsø to the new database. This will enable the hospital, the doctor on duty for accident and emergency services or the home-care service to read an up-to-date medication card and see which medications the regular GP has prescribed for the patient.
Must develop the patient record systems
This in turn means greater peace of mind for patients, who can feel more certain that they are getting the right medications - and the right dosages.
But first the electronic patient record systems used in the public health service must be developed to enable automatic update of medication cards when changes are made in the records. Larsen is counting on completion of this task during 2007.
The PhD project "Effects of Net-based medication cards" will last until the end of 2010, and forms part of the Health Service Programme at the NST. In the project, the researchers will also compare the work that has been done in this area in
The work is to be undertaken in collaboration with the University Hospital in Tromsø, the municipality of Tromsø, the municipality of Trondheim and the companies developing electronic records for the health service. The database will be established as a pilot project with the permission of the Norwegian Data Inspectorate (Datatilsynet).
Would you like to know more about this project?
Contact Eli Larsen, telephone (+47) 907 78 661.
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