Assisted prescribing: Clinical decision support with MedSafety Scan now available

Too often, adverse events due to prescription medications are a cause of death and disability. Many of these events could be prevented, but most efforts to do so have had limited success, mainly due to the challenges of having the information that is necessary for safe prescribing available at the time when prescriptions are being written. Hospital-based Clinical Decision Support (CDS) systems are being developed to manage this information, identify at- risk patients, and help mitigate their risk of medication-induced harm. AZCERT, a non-profit created in 1999 with federal funding has helped hospitals develop these systems and has released an internet-based CDS program to assist in the safe prescribing of medications. This CDS program, MedSafety Scan, can be customized for any clinical venue and is available as an open-source program for all healthcare providers at www.medsafetyscan.org.