Today, there's intense governmental and industry pressure for healthcare providers to move past their early struggles with implementing the electronic medical record (EMR). The reason is simple: experts view EMR as the "central nervous system" of an electronic healthcare system that will reduce medical errors, improve efficiency, and contain costs. It's the enabling technology for emerging applications such as computerized physician order entry (CPOE), e-prescribing and electronic medication administration records (eMAR).
And because so much of modern medical treatment revolves around drug therapy, any successful EMR implementation must incorporate a comprehensive and up-to-date drug database. First DataBank's
National Drug Data File Plus (NDDF Plus) is the most comprehensive and up-to-date in the industry. Our use in provider and pharmacy systems throughout the country is a clear indication of the trust we've earned in our 25 years as a pioneering industry leader.
Enhancing the Entire Continuum of Care
Industry and government reports have long pointed to paper records as a major source of medication errors, which can lead to adverse drug events. Enhanced patient safety, therefore, relies on physicians, pharmacists and nurses having convenient access to an electronic medical record that contains all pertinent patient information, with fast, reliable links to clinical data. We've built NDDF Plus from the ground up to offer each of the end users in the drug therapy workflow clear and trustworthy drug information in language tailored to their specific clinical and practical needs.
For example, our
Multiple Access Points or
MAPs are basic drug identifiers that use industry-standard vocabulary practices to enable all providers to zero in on drug information quickly and accurately. This facilitates safety-related measures that include improved communication and medication reconciliation.
Our
OrderView Med Knowledge Base simplifies and speeds up physician medication orders, and is ideal for closed-loop inpatient settings that rely on EMR. It allows you to check that physician orders have been transcribed correctly, and to quickly incorporate patient-specific factors, such as patient age, weight, and organ function. In addition, our
clinical modules interact with the EMR to check for drug-drug, drug-allergy, and drug-food interactions using a range of techniques that reduce alert overload without compromising patient safety. We also offer an array of
dosing content options that can reduce dose-related medication errors in the workflow. And our drug content facilitates FDA-mandated bar code scanning.
Finally, we are known throughout the industry for clearly written patient education materials, which help improve therapeutic compliance and encourage patients' knowledge about their care. By using web-based access, patients can view important information on drug therapy, such as counseling messages and label warnings.
Essential Building Blocks
In short, by drawing on the following components, First DataBank sets the standard for providing context-relevant drug information for the electronic medical record.
NDDF Plus is the leader in supplying comprehensive coverage of descriptive, pricing and clinical information on drugs. It encompasses medications approved by the FDA, plus commonly used over-the-counter drugs and information on herbals, nutraceuticals, dietary supplements, and medical devices. Comprehensive and up-to-date are the key concepts here, since drug content is dynamic and notoriously difficult to maintain. It's essential, therefore, that the drug database behind EMR applications be the most reliable in the industry. NDDF Plus is that database. It also offers you the most efficient ways of navigating to exactly the information you need for the task at hand, allowing for more informed decision-making, fewer medication errors and increased patient safety.
MAPs are basic drug identifiers that enable all users to zero in on First DataBank drug information quickly and efficiently within their normal workflow.
Our
Order View Med Knowledge Base establishes an order-centric view of medications, to match how a physician naturally orders meds. It is designed specifically to simplify and speed up med orders, and is ideal for closed-loop inpatient settings. It pioneers the concept of the "orderable med": drug content that enables clinicians to use their most common drug descriptions as "stepping stones" for completing medication orders in the fewest possible steps. OrderView also provides common order components, including valid dose increments and order sentences; links orderables seamlessly to associated products on a formulary and supports dose adjustments for organ impairment; performs mg/kg calculations for final doses; and handles inpatient and outpatient pediatric orders.
Our
Prescriber Order Entry Module also allows your system to incorporate a convenient, easy-to-use pick list of clinically valid dosage prescriptions specific to drug, route of administration and medical condition.
Our
clinical decision-support modules for drug-drug, drug-allergy, and drug-food interactions offer exceptionally flexible ways for you to create applications that categorize and display potentially harmful interactions. First DataBank's expert clinical staff separates the interactions into highly granular categories, and then carefully and consistently reviews each module to create subsets of the most clinically relevant drug interactions. This reduces "noise" that less relevant interactions create, and eliminates the need for clinicians to spend undue time researching alert messages.