ATTN: ONTARIO (GTA VERSION) NEWS/HEALTH EDITORS
Drug Profile Viewer provides medication history for ER patients

Ontario's Drug Profile Viewer (DPV) technology is having a major impact on patient safety according to health care providers in hospital emergency rooms.

Surveys of providers using the DPV, which stores the medication history of many ER patients, indicate strong satisfaction with the technology: 75 per cent of those surveyed said it helped promote patient safety and ensure patients' medication continued on admission to hospital; 80 per cent reported it helped identify potential adverse drug events; and 70 per cent said it improved co-ordination and quality of patient care.

Dr. Anil Chopra, head of emergency medicine at Toronto's University Health Network (UHN) cites the case of a man who came in with a head injury. "By accessing his drug history on the DPV, I learned he was on blood-thinner medication, which could have been dangerous as it increases the risk of bleeding in the brain after a head injury. So we responded with special testing and specific treatment. The DPV provided vital information that would have been difficult to get from the patient because of his disorientation and a language barrier."

The DPV give emergency-care providers in Ontario's hospital system the tools to identify and prevent harmful drug interactions by filling in some of the missing prescription information for many patients who are unconscious or cannot remember the information.

Sara Ingram, ER clinical pharmacist at UHN frequently consults the hospital's DPV on a daily basis. "Essentially being a pharmacist in emergency medicine is like being a detective," says Ingram. "You need to find the missing pieces to get a complete picture. The DPV is an essential tool for gathering the needed information. It can speak for patients when they can’t speak for themselves."

The project is currently expanding locations of the viewer within hospitals and into the community through physician offices to allow more authorized health care professionals to access the vital information.

Canada Health Infoway (Infoway) has invested $62.9 million in Ontario's DIS projects. You can learn more about the progress of electronic health record systems from Infoway's Annual Report at www.infoway-inforoute.ca.

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For more information contact:

Dan Strasbourg
Canada Health Infoway
416.595.3424
dstrasbourg@infoway-inforoute.ca