Several Canadian provinces are actively working towards Canada Health Infoway’s goal of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for 50 percent of Canadian residents by 2009, using their drug database of choice, First DataBank’s International Drug Data File™-Canada (IDDF™-Canada).

Alberta and Saskatchewan have already made significant progress with their provincial initiatives to achieve electronic health records for their residents by the end of this decade. Some provinces have been using IDDF-Canada for several years to automate drug claims processing, and are now moving into electronic health record applications. These provinces have also used the AHFS Drug Information® reference database from the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, tied directly to First DataBank’s IDDF-Canada, for access to in-depth drug information at the point of care.

According to Product Manager Lisa Geller, “Individual EHR’s will eventually capture—in electronic form—a complete picture of healthcare information for each patient. This will include a complete history of patient medical conditions, medications, allergies and so on. So as a patient moves through the entire healthcare system in a given province, providers will have instant access to critical information in a standardized format.” This is expected to improve patient care by doing away with handwritten paper files that are often hard to track down, even when a patient is within a hospital and moves between different levels of care. It will also provide doctors with accurate, up-to-date information on which to make faster and more informed diagnostic and treatment decisions.

Information on patient medications, for example, is often difficult to determine accurately, since it is usually provided from memory by patients themselves, or from varying portions of the patient’s medical information that is stored at different locations (hospital, physician office, pharmacy). Geller noted that, “Providers can be more confident in prescribing and ordering drug therapy when they’re aware of factors like drug-drug interactions, duplicate therapy, and drug-allergy interactions, using First DataBank drug information available in real time.” These are basic first steps toward assuring a reduction in medication errors—a major cause of patient medical injuries.

For further information on the progress of these projects, visit:
Alberta Netcare
Saskatchewan Pharmaceutical Information Program (PIP)

First DataBank, a subsidiary of Hearst Corporation, is the leading provider of context-relevant, integrated drug information. For over 25 years we’ve partnered with information-system developers throughout the healthcare continuum to make drug content relevant from the perspectives of multiple end users, and executable at the point of need. We have successfully delivered proven drug knowledge bases for integration into a wide range of applications, with particular expertise in clinical decision support within the workflow. Together with our development partners, First DataBank helps reduce the incidence of medication errors and adverse drug events, which promises to lower healthcare costs and improve patient care

AHFS Drug Information® is a comprehensive, unbiased and evidence-based drug information database published by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. For more than 60 years, ASHP has helped pharmacists who practice in hospitals and health systems improve medication use and enhance patient safety. The Society's 30,000 members include pharmacists and pharmacy technicians who practice in inpatient, outpatient, home-care, and long-term-care settings, as well as pharmacy students.

© 2006, First DataBank, Inc. A subsidiary of Hearst Corporation. All trademarks mentioned herein are the properties of their respective owners.

Lisa Geller, Product Manager
(650) 246-2890
Lisa_Geller@firstdatabank.com

Back to Press Releases