Abstract
In pharmacies in Sweden, a clinical decision support system called Electronic Expert Support (EES) is available to analyse patients’ prescriptions for potential drug-related problems. A nationwide intervention was performed in 2018 among all Swedish pharmacy chains to increase the use of EES among patients 75 years or older. The aim of this research was to study the use of EES in connection with the national intervention in order to describe any effects of the intervention, to understand how pharmacists use EES and to identify any barriers and facilitators for the use of EES by pharmacists for elderly patients. Data on the number and categories of EES analyses, alerts, resolved alerts and active pharmacies was provided by the Swedish eHealth Agency. The effects of the intervention were analysed using interrupted time series regression. A web-based questionnaire comprising 20 questions was sent to 1500 pharmacists randomly selected from all pharmacies in Sweden. The study shows that pharmacists use and appreciate EES and that the national intervention had a clear effect during the week of the intervention and seems to have contributed to a faster increase in pharmacists’ use of EES during the year to follow. The study also identified several issues or barriers for using EES.
Highlights
Medication is an essential part of health care, and appropriate treatments with medications can cure and prevent many conditions [1]
The study shows that pharmacists use and appreciate Expert Support (EES) and that the national intervention had a clear effect during the week of the intervention and seems to have contributed to a faster increase in pharmacists’ use of EES during the year to follow
The aim of this research was to study the use of EES in connection with the national intervention in order to describe any effects of the intervention, to better understand how EES is used by pharmacists and to identify any barriers and facilitators for the use of EES by pharmacists as a part of their work to improve medication use for elderly patients
Summary
Medication is an essential part of health care, and appropriate treatments with medications can cure and prevent many conditions [1]. Information or knowledge regarding medications is ever growing and needs to be continuously updated and implemented in clinical practice [7,8,9]. Clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) in the medication management process are being used to support decisions regarding medication, to facilitate evidence-based medicine, to reduce the incidence of DRPs and to improve health care quality and efficiency [7,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. A CDSS can, for example, support physicians and pharmacists in detecting potential DRPs by linking patients’ current medications together with patient-specific factors.
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