As part of the medication management of the E-Discharge solution, Bluewire use the DM+D vocabulary dictionary containing unique identifiers and associated textual descriptions for medicines and medical devices. DM+D, which has been developed and delivered through a partnership between NHS Connecting for Health and the NHS Business Services Authority, does not currently provide decision support which is of growing interest from Bluewire’s users.

The company has therefore addressed the need by signing an agreement with First DataBank with their Multilex system providing clinical decision support and is designed to provide healthcare professionals with intelligently filtered, patient-specific drug information at appropriate times throughout a patient’s care. The emphasis is on supporting clinicians in their clinical decision making, rather than making decisions for them.

The E-Discharge system already includes the facility for doctors, consultants and their juniors to compile a list of their most popular drugs prescribed and the integration of the multiplex product will provide clinical decision support helping clinicians to select an appropriate medication and the correct dose. It reviews the patient’s allergies, conditions and concurrent medications and triggers on-screen alerts if the newly selected medication could be harmful to the patient.

Integrated into the E-Discharge solution links with a patient’s record and their clinical decision support will enable safer prescribing, dispensing and administration, helping to reduce medication errors during a patients stay in hospital and especially when to-take-out medication is prescribed through the pharmacy process of the E-Discharge solution.

The Multilex as an alternative to DM+D within its E-Discharge solution is aimed at improving patient safety in drugs administration, a key criticism outlined in the Care Quality Commission report released in October 2009.