OPADE: development of an European computerized drug prescription system

Many computerized drug prescription systems have been developed but they are rarely used in clinical practice because of their lack of integration with the functioning of medical institutions and the difficulty of building and maintaining a complete knowledge base on drugs. We present in this paper a system, called OPADE, which answers these shortcomings and we argue that a system actually used by practitioners may introduce a positive feed back loop in the prescribing process.