There are “five rights” of medication use: the right patient, the right drug, the right time, the right dose, and the right route. It might seem obvious, but in practice, an error can occur at the level of each of these “right”s. 

Unsafe medication practices and medication errors are leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in health care systems worldwide. According to WHO, the cost associated with medication errors has been estimated at $42 billion annually globally. The Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Healthcare estimates that between 2% and 3% of all Australian hospital admissions are medication-related. In the UK, it is estimated that adverse drug reactions account for 10-20% of hospital in-patient admissions, according to the Chief Pharmaceutical Officer’s National Overprescribing Review, which was published in September 2021.

This episode is a recording of a panel discussion at the Talking Healthtech Winter Summit in Australia in August. The panel session you’re about to hear is focused on medication management in the hospital setting. It will give you an overview of: 

• the current problems with medications in the hospital setting, 
• why are decision support systems suboptimal, 
• what it takes to implement healthcare IT in the hospital setting. 

Speakers: 

• Melissa Fodera, Chief Pharmacy Informatics Officer (CPIO) Western Health Australia,
• Božidarka Radović, Better Meds Product Lead at the health IT company Better, 
• Gidi Stein, CEO of MedAware. 

RESOURCES:

Talking Healthtech Winter Summit: https://www.talkinghealthtech.com/summit 

www.facesofdigitalhealth.com 

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