ATTN: SASKATCHEWAN (SASKATOON) NEWS/HEALTH EDITORS
Pharmaceutical Information Program Safeguards Saskatchewan Patients

The overdose death of a Saskatoon man, who had received some 300 prescriptions in the year before his death, was partially responsible for the development of Saskatchewan's Pharmaceutical Information Program (PIP).

In response to the recommendations of the subsequent coroner's inquest into the man’s death, Saskatchewan passed The Prescription Amendment Act to allow the province's clinicians to monitor for similar multiple prescription situations, and take appropriate steps to save a patient from an inadvertent or intended drug overdose.

Established in 2005, the PIP gives authorized health care professionals – doctors, nurses and pharmacists – access to the medication records of their patients, thus enabling them to manage, share and safeguard prescription drug therapies.

PIP provides medication information to help clinicians select the best prescription treatments, identify drug interactions, duplications of therapy, and prescription drug abuse. The Program can be accessed in all Saskatchewan pharmacies, hospital emergency rooms and in more than 100 physician offices. And that's vital in situations where patients are managing multiple therapies for a chronic disease or are in trauma and cannot speak for themselves.

Barb Evans, a pharmacist with Saskatoon Health Region, values the technology. She cites an example of an unconscious senior with a head trauma arriving at the hospital. "Through PIP we are able to securely access his full medication history – identifying early on any new treatment that could conflict with his care. PIP can help speak for a patient when they can't speak for themselves."

This project, partially-funded by Canada Health Infoway (Infoway), is a unique success story for Saskatchewan, not only because of its current application, but also because it will be enhanced by the creation of paperless electronic prescriptions, approved in the province this summer.

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