Retrospective monitoring of drug-drug interactions using a CPOE alerting knowledgebase.
BACKGROUND
A retrospective drug-drug interaction (DDI) monitoring report was generated from computerized physician order entry (CPOE) medication lists using an existing DDI CPOE alerting knowledgebase.


METHODS
All active medications ordered for elderly outpatients during the two years prior to February 27th, 2007 were retrieved. Every medication pair was processed using SQL through the DDI knowledgebase to generate a report containing all potential DDIs for each patient.


RESULTS
One out of four elderly patients (26.6%) has an existing DDI on their active medication list. There are substantially more DDIs at lower levels of severity (Moderate and Severe), but 70 patients had Level 1, "absolutely harmful" contraindications.


CONCLUSIONS
The majority of DDIs are of Moderate severity. These results have spurred clinical leadership to form a review committee to assess the clinical relevancy of current DDI knowledgebase content.
Buck
Michael D
MD
Department of Biomedical Informatics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA. mike.buck@utah.edu
D000368:Aged; D000554:Ambulatory Care Facilities; D000075202:Contraindications; D019033:Delivery of Health Care, Integrated; D004347:Drug Interactions; D016903:Drug Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D051188:Knowledge Bases; D050316:Medical Order Entry Systems; D008509:Medication Systems; D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations; D017010:Reminder Systems
D004364:Pharmaceutical Preparations