E-prescribing: a focused review and new approach to addressing safety in pharmacies and primary care

E-prescribing, the health information technology (HIT) that enables prescribers to electronically transmit prescriptions to community pharmacies, has been touted as a solution for improving patient safety and overall quality of care. However, the impact of HIT, such as e-prescribing on medication errors in acute care settings, has been widely studied and shows that if poorly designed or implemented, HIT can pose a risk to patient safety by introducing a source of medication errors. Unlike acute care settings, safety issues related to e-prescribing in primary care settings (where e-prescriptions are generated and transmitted) and pharmacies (where e-prescriptions are received) have not received as much attention in the literature. This paper provides a focused review of patient safety issues related to using e-prescribing systems in primary care and pharmacies. In addition, the paper proposes using human factors engineering concepts to study e-prescribing safety in pharmacies and primary care settings to identify safety problems and possible mechanisms for improvement.