Being a doctor can be very gratifying when a life is saved or a patient is cured. However, the number of jobs and skills physicians need to master is increasing with the advancement of technology and science. This makes the medical environment increasingly stressful, also because at the moment, many IT solutions are burdensome and add the bureaucratic workload to the schedules of doctors. Today’s topic is how to doctors approach and manage medication prescribing. I spoke with David W. Bates, Patient Safety Expert and Harvard MD, who is an internationally renowned expert in patient safety, using information technology to improve care, quality-of-care, cost-effectiveness, and outcomes assessment in medical practice. He is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a Professor of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, where he co-directs the Program in Clinical Effectiveness. He directs the Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and serves as external program lead for research in the World Health Organization’s Global Alliance for Patient Safety. He has published over 700 peer-reviewed papers. 

We discussed: 

• How is patient care changing and impacting medication management,
• Why doctors ignore alerts of decision support systems,
• What are healthcare IT systems missing in the UX design, 
• What do doctors hope to see from IT in the near future,
• And how should organisations approach patient safety culture improvements?

Enjoy the discussion, go to www.facesofdigitalhealth,com This discussion was part of a series of discussions recorded for the movie (OVER)DOSE – How can we prevent medication errors? 

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