Medical Treatment News

Includes articles about funding etc.


New MedAppz Module Protects Patients From Dangerous Drug Interactions

---

27 Sep 2006

MedAppz, the leader in web-based electronic health record (EHR) applications, today announced that it has built into the MedAppz iSuite new technology that automatically detects and alerts physicians about potentially harmful drug-drug and drug-allergy interactions.

Called the Drug-Drug Interaction Module (DDIM), the new technology is free to all current and future MedAppz iSuite users and is available immediately.

"There are over two million adverse drug interactions each year, and more than 100,000 resulting deaths," said Brian Lichtlin, MedAppz CEO. "By building this potentially life-saving capability into our MedAppz iSuite software at no cost to our physician users, we are giving physicians one more reason to buy an EHR system, and one more differentiation between us and competitors."

According to the Center of Disease Evaluation and Research, adverse drug interactions are a more common cause of death than pulmonary disease, diabetes, AIDS, and automobile accidents.

The DDIM functions entirely automatically. When a physician is considering prescribing a medication for a patient, the moment he enters it into the system, the MedAppz iSuite immediately compares and checks it against patient allergies and other medications the patient is taking. If there are potentially harmful interactions, the system immediately throws an alert, so that the physician can choose an alternative medication.

The DDIM defines 14 different sorts of clinical effects and four levels of severity for any given adverse drug interaction. The levels of severity range from Contraindicated Drug Combinations (in which case two given drugs should never be taken at the same time) to Severe Interactions, Moderate Interactions, and finally Undetermined Severity - Alternative Therapy Interactions (where interactions may occur, but its severity is unknown and is not prohibited by the FDA).

The MedAppz iSuite is a comprehensive system that allows ambulatory care practices to securely schedule appointments, chart patient information, write prescriptions, bill patients, and file claims over the web. The MedAppz iSuite Service is currently used in more than 200 clinics across the nation.

MedAppz
http://www.""MedAppz"".com∞

http://www.medilexicon.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=52777∞

Categories

CategoryMedicalInfo