The Application of Knowledge-Based Clinical Decision Support Systems to Detect Antibiotic Allergy.

Prevention of drug allergies is important for patient safety. The objective of this study was to evaluate the outcomes of antibiotic allergy-checking clinical decision support system (CDSS), K-CDSTM. A retrospective chart review study was performed in 29 hospitals and antibiotic allergy alerts data were collected from May to August 2022. A total of 15,535 allergy alert cases from 1586 patients were reviewed. The most frequently prescribed antibiotics were cephalosporins (48.5%), and there were more alerts of potential cross-reactivity between beta-lactam antibiotics than between antibiotics with the same ingredients or of the same class. Regarding allergy symptoms, dermatological disorders were the most common (38.8%), followed by gastrointestinal disorders (28.4%). The 714 cases (4.5%) of immune system disorders included 222 cases of anaphylaxis and 61 cases of severe cutaneous adverse reactions. Alerts for severe symptoms were reported in 6.4% of all cases. This study confirmed that K-CDS can effectively detect antibiotic allergies and prevent the prescription of potentially allergy-causing antibiotics among patients with a history of antibiotic allergies. If K-CDS is expanded to medical institutions nationwide in the future, it can prevent an increase in allergy recurrence related to drug prescriptions through cloud-based allergy detection CDSSs.

Higher systemic antibiotic consumption in a population of South Korea (2008 - 2009).

This study was conducted to investigate overall systemic antibiotic consumption levels and specific patterns using standardized Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical/Defined Daily Dose (ATC/DDD) methodology. National Health Insurance claims data during 2008 and 2009 was used. Antibiotic prescription data was classified using the ATC system and converted into DDD. Consumption figures were presented as the number of DDD per 1,000 inhabitants per day (DID). Detailed information on indications and seasonal variations, age and institutional determinants on antibiotic consumption were also explored. Total consumption was slightly increased from 24.3 to 25.2 DID in 2009 compared to 2008. The most frequently prescribed antibiotic was amoxicillin/clavulanic acid (5.1 and 5.2 DID, in 2008 and 2009, respectively), followed by cefaclor (3.0 and 3.3 DID) and amoxicillin (3.3 and 3.2 DID). Respiratory system diseases were the main causes of antimicrobial prescription (47.3%) and acute forms of bronchitis, tonsillitis and sinusitis were the most common diseases. There were typical seasonal fluctuations with heightened winter peaks. Consumption figures under 5 years of age (41.6 and 43.3 DID) were even higher than figures in aged 65 - 80 (36.2 and 39.1 DID). Antibiotic consumption in South Korea remained high compared with other OECD countries. Efforts to increase prudent antibiotic use, especially for upper respiratory system infections and for younger children, should be made to decrease antibiotic use.

Shared Interoperable Clinical Decision Support Service for Drug-Allergy Interaction Checks: Implementation Study.

BACKGROUND: Clinical decision support (CDS) can improve health care with respect to the quality of care, patient safety, efficiency, and effectiveness. Establishing a CDS system in a health care setting remains a challenge. A few hospitals have used self-developed in-house CDS systems or commercial CDS solutions. Since these in-house CDS systems tend to be tightly coupled with a specific electronic health record system, the functionality and knowledge base are not easily shareable. A shared interoperable CDS system facilitates the sharing of the knowledge base and extension of CDS services. OBJECTIVE: The study focuses on developing and deploying the national CDS service for the drug-allergy interaction (DAI) check for health care providers in Korea that need to introduce the service but lack the budget and expertise. METHODS: To provide the shared interoperable CDS service, we designed and implemented the system based on the CDS Hooks specification and Health Level Seven (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard. The study describes the CDS development process. The system development went through requirement analysis, design, implementation, and deployment. In particular, the concept architecture was designed based on the CDS Hooks structure. The MedicationRequest and AllergyIntolerance resources were profiled to exchange data using the FHIR standard. The discovery and DAI check application programming interfaces and rule engine were developed. RESULTS: The CDS service was deployed on G-Cloud, a government cloud service. In March 2021, the CDS service was launched, and 67 health care providers participated in the CDS service. The health care providers participated in the service with 1,008,357 DAI checks for 114,694 patients, of which 33,054 (3.32%) cases resulted in a "warning." CONCLUSIONS: Korea's Ministry of Health and Welfare has been trying to build an HL7 FHIR-based ecosystem in Korea. As one of these efforts, the CDS service initiative has been conducted. To promote the rapid adoption of the HL7 FHIR standard, it is necessary to accelerate practical service development and to appeal to policy makers regarding the benefits of FHIR standardization. With the development of various case-specific implementation guides using the Korea Core implementation guide, the FHIR standards will be distributed nationwide, and more shared interoperable health care services will be introduced in Korea.

A Personalized and Learning Approach for Identifying Drugs with Adverse Events.

PURPOSE: Adverse drug events (ADEs) are associated with high health and financial costs and have increased as more elderly patients treated with multiple medications emerge in an aging society. It has thus become challenging for physicians to identify drugs causing adverse events. This study proposes a novel approach that can improve clinical decision making with recommendations on ADE causative drugs based on patient information, drug information, and previous ADE cases. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We introduce a personalized and learning approach for detecting drugs with a specific adverse event, where recommendations tailored to each patient are generated using data mining techniques. Recommendations could be improved by learning the associations of patients and ADEs as more ADE cases are accumulated through iterations. After consulting the system-generated recommendations, a physician can alter prescriptions accordingly and report feedback, enabling the system to evolve with actual causal relationships. RESULTS: A prototype system is developed using ADE cases reported over 1.5 years and recommendations obtained from decision tree analysis are validated by physicians. Two representative cases demonstrate that the personalized recommendations could contribute to more prompt and accurate responses to ADEs. CONCLUSION: The current system where the information of individual drugs exists but is not organized in such a way that facilitates the extraction of relevant information together can be complemented with the proposed approach to enhance the treatment of patients with ADEs. Our illustrative results show the promise of the proposed system and further studies are expected to validate its performance with quantitative measures.

Temporal decrease in overall antibiotic consumption accompanying antibiotic prescribing rate disclosure policy: evidence from analysis of national health insurance claims data in South Korea.

The health insurance review and assessment services, responsible for the assessment of quality and quantity of healthcare providers' services, implemented a public disclosure policy for antibiotic prescribing rate in February 2006. The aim of this study was to investigate changes of overall antibiotic consumption following the policy by analysing national healthcare utilization data from 2005 to 2009. Prescription information of systemic antibiotics excluding antifungals and topical antibiotics was retrospectively collected from the population-based health insurance claims sample data for the five years from 2005 to 2009. Those data were analysed using the standardised anatomical therapeutic chemical/defined daily dose method. Antibiotic consumption was standardised by the defined daily dose per 1,000 inhabitants per day (DID). Descriptive statistics was used to present consumption figures for every year. Secondary comparison to other OECD countries based on published reports was added to weigh the antibiotic consumption level of South Korea in a global perspective. Overall antibiotic consumption decreased in 2006 (23.8 DID, 3.6 % decrease from 24.7 DID in 2005) and 2007 (21.5 DID, 9.7 % decrease from 2006), but rebounded in 2008 (24.3 DID, 13 % increase from 2007) and 2009 (25.2 DID, 3.7 % increase from 2008). Temporal decreases in 2006 and 2007 were attributed to fewer prescriptions of penicillins (J01C group), among which the decrease in amoxicillin consumption was almost equal to that of overall antibiotic consumption. A similar fluctuation trend in overall antibiotic consumption occurred in the out-patient setting rather than the in-patient setting. Amoxicillin decreased since 2007, while amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, cefaclor and clarithromycin increased without dropping. The estimated antibiotic consumption level in this study was higher than the average of OECD countries, and the yearly fluctuation shown during the five years was a country specific pattern observed only in South Korea. Overall antibiotic consumption was temporarily decreased in 2006 and 2007. But this result might not signify an effect of government policy of antibiotic prescribing rate disclosure to the public. The results presented in DID unit, a more objective index than prescribing rates, suggest the need for further strategies to reduce antibiotic use nationwide.

Identification of inappropriate drug prescribing by computerized, retrospective DUR screening in Korea.

BACKGROUND: In Korea, the drug use process has changed significantly since the new pharmacy law was implemented in 2000, separating the prescribing and dispensing functions between physicians and pharmacists and mandating prospective drug use review (DUR) practice by pharmacists immediately before dispensing medications. However, a high prevalence of inappropriate prescribing has been suspected by the public, pharmacists, and health insurance managers, possibly due to suboptimal DUR practice by pharmacists. OBJECTIVE: To assess overall patterns of drug usage and potential problems of inappropriate use in outpatient settings by analyzing prescription data that were electronically submitted to the national health insurance manager with a computerized DUR system and develop a computerized adjudication system model for drug claims. METHODS: The national prescription drug claims data that were submitted electronically by pharmacies located in the northern part of Korea during 15 days in 2002 were retrospectively screened against the predetermined DUR standards of the selected criteria on drug dosage, duration of therapy, and drug interaction using the DUR screening system. The results of all the DUR conflicts were further validated manually by an expert panel and statistically analyzed to determine drug use patterns. RESULTS: Of 31,994,260 drugs prescribed, 3,325,760 (10.4%) items showed a conflict with at least one of the DUR standards. The average number of drugs prescribed on each prescription was 4.07, and even more troubling was the high incidence of under-dosing, over-dosing, and contraindicated drug prescribing. CONCLUSIONS: It is evident that inappropriate drug prescribing is very common in Korea; thus, a great deal of attention is urgently needed in the country with respect to proper prescribing and supportive interventions.