Information technology for ensuring drug safety

Abstract

In Japan, information technology (IT) in the medical field has prevailed as a means for handling claims for health insurance reimbursement. In contrast, IT is primarily used for electronic medical records in Western countries. Originally, preparation of health insurance claims was one of the outcomes of computerized medical information in Japan. As its protocols are already well established in Japan, information from the insurance claim system is hard to integrate into the Electronic Medical Chart system. To ensure drug safety, it is necessary to determine the number of users, and to accurately tabulate the incidence of adverse events. For this purpose, three kinds of information are required: prescription information, dispensing information, and drug administration information. Prescription information and dispensing information should be consistent with each other in content. Dispensing information is essential to identify the "substance" when adverse events occur. Drug administration information is the "true drug history". With these three kinds of information, it should be possible to enter drug safety data as evidence. To accurately capture these three kinds of information, it is necessary to utilize Standard Drug Code and Standard Usage Master, suggesting that it may be necessary to reconstruct the current system.