A Preliminary Scoping Review of the Impact of e-Prescribing on Pharmacists in Community Pharmacies.

OBJECTIVE: This scoping review aims to map the available literature and provide an overview of the published articles discussing the impact of electronic prescribing on medication errors and pharmacy workflow. METHODS: The literature search was conducted using PubMed®, Web of Science®, and the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews®, as well as grey literature reports, using the search terms and related components of "pharmacists", "electronic prescribing", "medication errors", and "efficiency". The search included all articles that were published from January 2011 to September 2023. Twenty-two relevant articles were identified and fully reviewed, ten of which were included in this review. RESULTS: Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) provides a solution for some of the challenges that are associated with handwritten and paper prescriptions. However, the implementation of e-prescribing systems has been recognized as a source of new unforeseen medication errors in all the reviewed articles. Productivity in community pharmacies has been affected with receiving electronic prescriptions (e-prescriptions) and having to deal with the issues that arise from them. The pharmacists' interventions were not eliminated with e-prescriptions compared to other prescription formats. The most frequently reported reason for intervention was related to incomplete instructions in the field of directions of use. Other common challenges with e-prescriptions were related to missing information, quantity, inappropriate dose, dosage form, and drug. DISCUSSION: This review demonstrates the scarcity of research about the impact of electronic prescribing on medication error and efficiency in community pharmacies. In the literature, most of the studies had mainly focused on hospital pharmacies. The literature search demonstrated that there are still some barriers to overcome with e-prescribing systems and that medication errors were not fully eliminated with e-prescriptions. New errors have been identified with e-prescriptions, all of which caused delays in processing, which affected the productivity of the pharmacy staff, and could have negatively impacted patients' safety if not properly resolved. CONCLUSION: e-Prescribing solved some of the challenges associated with illegibility of handwritten prescriptions. However, more time is required to allow e-prescribing systems to mature. Further training for prescribers and pharmacists is also recommended before and after the implementation.

Empathetic and Emotive Design Heuristics: Preliminary Results of Their Application to Evaluating Survey User Interfaces.

Empathetic and emotive design is becoming increasingly important in the digital age. In this research we describe the results of a combined cognitive walkthrough and heuristic evaluation using newly developed, empirically derived empathy or emotive design heuristics. We applied the heuristics to the evaluation of four commonly used survey platforms. Our preliminary findings revealed that the heuristics performed effectively in scoring survey platforms on their level of empathy. Survey platforms that are highly empathetic were scored highest.

Integrating Human Patterns of Qualitative Coding with Machine Learning: A Pilot Study Involving Technology-Induced Error Incident Reports.

The objective of this research was to develop a reproducible method of integrating human patterns of qualitative coding with machine learning. The application of qualitative codes from the technology-induced error and safety literatures to the analysis of incident reports was done successfully, helping to identify the factors that lead to an error as well as the errors themselves. The method described in this paper may provide additional insights into understanding technology-induced errors.

Do Health Technology Safety Issues Vary by Vendor?

There is a need to determine the relative similarity and differences in safety issues across specific types of software and medical devices in order to develop standardized solutions that can be used across these technologies. Over the past several years, health informatics researchers have identified differing types of technology-induced errors or safety issues. This work has led to a literature that has been effective in identifying varying technology-induced errors. Less effort has been made in attempting to understand if there are common types of safety issues and outcomes across vendors for specific types of technology such as electronic health records (EHRs). Our findings demonstrate that some safety issues are common across the same type of software. The findings suggest there is a need to develop standardized approaches to managing technology-induced errors.

Complexity and Health Technology Safety.

In many ways health technology safety has improved significantly over the past few decades. Yet, we still have examples of incidents where safety of health technology systems of care have led to possible and actual safety incidents. In this paper we examine the complexity of errors in an increasingly complex and digitized system of care. Although safety incidents are decreasing over time due to improvements in the tools used to support care, they still occur. Simple safety incidents prevailed in the 2005. Today, incident reports suggest complexity has emerged as an important issue that needs to be addressed in order to make further healthcare industry safety gains.