Study finds errors in 10 percent of computerized prescriptions

The electronic tools that are designed to prevent errors in prescriptions have their own issues, according to researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

An analysis of almost 4,000 computer-generated prescriptions sent to a commercial pharmacy chain over a four-week period uncovered errors in more than 10 percent of the prescriptions. One third of those errors had the potential to cause a patient harm, according to the researchers, whose findings appear in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

SOURCE [1]