Computer applications in hospital pharmacy practice. II. Manual backup/support system

The planning phase of a hospital pharmacy computer system usually does not address the issue of a suitable backup should the computer fail. This article describes a backup system centered around a hard-copy patient medication profile. This profile is built through use of computer-generated duplicate labels and exists for both the unit dose and intravenous admixture services. With this approach, the computer initiates its own support system and thereby eliminates the need for a separate, manually maintained backup system.