ATTN: ONTARIO (OTTAWA 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 Ontario’s hospital emergency rooms.

Surveys of providers using the Viewer indicate strong satisfaction with the technology, which provides the medication history of many ER patients.
Some 75 per cent of surveyed clinicians 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. John Earle, medical director of emergency medicine at Ottawa's Queensway Carleton Hospital points out that emergency visits are episodic. "Patients arrive unprepared and often under stressful circumstances. This means medication lists are not thought about in advance of arriving at the hospital," say Earle. "Also, by looking at their medication history on the DPV, you can often pull out a patient's health history by analyzing the treatments previously prescribed for them."

The DPV is giving emergency-care providers across 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 Toronto's University Health Network uses the DPV 10 times a day on average. "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 of the situation. The DPV is an essential tool for gathering the 'need-to-know-right-now' 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