title: Enhancing participant safety through electronically generated medication order sets in a clinical research environment: a medical informatics initiative.
abstract: While clinical medicine is often well supported by health system information technology infrastructure, clinical research may need to create strategies to use clinical-medicine informational technology tools. The authors describe a medication-safety initiative that was carried out in a National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA)-sponsored clinical research environment. A web based, medical informatics application was designed and implemented that allowed research groups to build protocol specific, electronic medication templates that were subsequently used to create participant-specific medication order sets for conductance of clinical research activities in the CTSA-sponsored clinical research environment. The medical informatics initiative eliminated typewritten or handwritten medication orders, created research protocol-specific templates meeting institutional order-writing requirements, and formalized a rigorous review and approval process. Enhancing safety in medication ordering and prescribing practices in a clinical research environment provided the background for multidisciplinary cooperation in medical informatics.
authors.affiliation: Hospital Pharmacy Services, Mayo Clinic, St. Marys Hospital, Rochester, Minnesota, USA. formea.christine@mayo.edu
authors.forename: Christine M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Formea
authors.forename: Andrew F
authors.initials: AF
authors.lastname: Picha
authors.forename: Monica G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Griffin
authors.forename: Jane A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Schaller
authors.forename: Mary R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000458:organization & administration*; D055695:Electronic Prescribing; D006801:Humans; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008509:Medication Systems / Q000458:organization & administration*; D017751:Safety Management / Q000458:organization & administration*