Cost of developing a computerized drug file.
The personnel time and costs involved in manually developing a master drug file are described. This system was designed independently by the pharmacy personnel of a 550-bed medical center to support the computer programs for drug purchasing, inventory control, outpatient services, i.v. admixture services, and pharmacy management reports. The master drug file was created to contain data on every drug and nondrug line item used in the pharmaceutical services of the medical center. The process of manually developing the drug file and entering the data into the computer system required six weeks, 732 pharmacy staff hours, 120 hours of supervision by administrative pharmacy personnel, 50 hours of program planning and organization of computerized programs, and cost a total of $8451. The drug file contains 1138 drug formulary line items; 0.88 hours were consumed per line item, at a development cost of $7.43 per line item. Although a commercially available drug file could have provided 35,000 records at half the cost, it was concluded that the independent development of the master drug file was justified in terms of meeting this medical center's specific information needs.
D003201:Computers; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D007256:Information Systems / Q000191:economics*; D008910:Minnesota; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D010607:Pharmacy Service, Hospital / Q000191:economics; D013997:Time Factors
D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations