Electronic prescribing: the risk of errors and adverse effects

Errors associated with the use of electronic prescribing have been slowly coming to light since the 2000s, as health care has become increasingly computerised. Serious adverse effects and even deaths have resulted from omissions, wrong-patient, wrong-drug or wrong-dose errors, and errors in drug administration. The use of order sets has led to duplicate therapy. Compared with handwritten prescriptions, the analysis of electronic prescriptions demands particular efforts on the part of pharmacists and other health professionals in order to detect errors.