In the digital healthcare ecosystem, data isn’t just limited to mere information, but rather a pivotal medical tool. Whether it’s an e-prescription, a hospital’s inventory, or a pharmacy’s software, all build upon one fundamental component: the Drug Database.
Suppose an unwounded surgeon had to operate with a scalpel for which the disinfected cover had been misplaced. The possibilities of infection and infection complications are extremely high. A digital health platform functioning on an inaccurate list of medicines is no different. It is a tool that is infected, and no doubt does and can harm patients. In three years of experience on building and maintain pharmaceutical data for more than 300 partners, we have witnessed how these blunders are made, and how dire the consequences are.
Breach of patient safety is no longer a feature to be added. It simply is the focus of the health system. The goal of this paper is to analyse the high-stakes aspects of pharmaceutical data and delineate the reasons why the Drug Formulary and the data contained in it in your system is a definite life-saving pillar.
The Catastrophic Contagion of Data Quality Problems
A misplaced comma in an excel cell could cost an organization millions of dollars. These are not abstract concerns. These are the types of concerns that pharmacists and physicians contend with every day.
1. The Disastrous Allergy Mismatch
- The Situation: A patient has a clinically proven and severe allergy to penicillin. A clinician writes a prescription and is told he needs to prescribe an antibiotic. There is a new class antibiotic that is a derivative of penicillin that a clinician needs to prescribe. The system has not been updated, and the Drug Data provider has not updated the Medicine Index to ensure that the new “Nexa” antibiotic is flagged under “not to prescribe or administer in case a patient has a penicillin allergy”.
- The Outcome: There is no signal and no alert and therefore the clinician is able to prescribe the new Nexa drug and a penicillin derivative. The dispenser is able to provide the drug, on the assumption of no warning signals. The patient experiences the drug and dies due to anaphylactic shock.
- The Source: The missing relationship is data. An incomplete All medicine Name List is critical to understanding patient safety.
2. The Tragic Overdose from Vague Data
- The Scenario: A physician orders liquid medication for a child and is frustrated when their system classifies the dosage strength as “50mg.” The product is actually “50mg per 5ml.” The physician or the system’s auto-dosing calculator settles upon “50mg” and disregards the assumption that a concentration must be calculated.
- The Result: The child is prescribed a 5x overdose. Such errors in prescription dosage are particularly devastating for paediatric and geriatric patients.
- The Root Cause: The “Drug Data” is unclear. A properly structured database captures both “strength” and “concentration” in separate fields and leaves no room for interpretation.
3. The Silent but Deadly Contraindication
- The Scenario: A patient is on a long-term blood thinner, such as warfarin. Because of pain, a physician is bound to order a common said such as Ibuprofen. Most digital systems would flag this, as there is added risk of bleeding for patients on blood thinners, especially for those on anticoagulant therapy.
- The Problem: The Drug Formulary for the system is out of date and has inaccuracies about the latest interaction warnings published by regulatory bodies that are six months behind.
- The Result: Due to the pharmacist intervention monitoring system not working properly, the patient develops complications from a major gastrointestinal bleed after taking both drugs simultaneously.
System-Wide Failures: When Inaccuracy Erodes Trust
The danger of a bad list of medicines extends beyond individual prescriptions. It corrodes the entire healthcare infrastructure.
The Trust Erosion
Pharmacists are the last line of defence when it comes to the safety of the patient. It’s shocking that the software submitted to them is consistently registering outdated prices, missing drugs, and concocted formulations. The misplaced trust is highly dangerous and causes.
- Alert fatigue: The system alerts the pharmacist of so many false errors, the real errors are ignored.
- Slowdown and Workarounds: The unnecessary and time-consuming manual procedure of checking every prescription is now the responsibility of the pharmacist. The entire process becomes so flawed that there is a burnout which increases the chances of human errors.
At Data Requisite, we have interviewed a large and diverse focus of people including hundreds of pharmacists. The most common and frustrating system issue, in their view, is the system that “lies” to them. They desire a Medicine Index which can be viewed with the same loyalty as their own personal knowledge.
Collapse of Supply Chain and Inventory
At Drug Database, apart from prescriptions, there is something called inventory. It is essential in maintaining a tracker for every single product, ranging for a 10mg pill to a 100ml vial using an identifier. Databases should be correct, assuming there are no errors.
Mis-inventory, if a hospital, cardiac medicine is showed as 100 units in stock, it is likely to the assumption that it is the adult version, critical in a ER is needed. In panic, the pharmacy discovers that the product is wrong. Accidental false/miscalculated data is a loss. Critical care is no time for error.
All medicine Name List
An All-medicine Name List is fundamentally a collection of names of medicines. Keeping it up to date is crucial, and still is an important task that needs to be done. It certainly needs a piece of mind that a whole lot more comes to filling a “drug database”.
Over 30 data points are tracked and updated, every single item, for the sake of accuracy, should include.
- Brand and Generic Names: Trade names like Crocin as a composition, or Paracetamol as an active member.
- Precise Formulation: Tablet, Capsule, Syrup, Injection, ER, and more.
- Exact Strength and Concentration: It is in a divided form of 500mg, or 125mg/5ml.
- Manufacturer and Marketer: Crucial for batch records and recall management.
- Drug Classifications: Therapeutic (e.g., antibiotic), and chemical (e.g., penicillin).
- Interaction data: Drug-drug, drug-food, and drug-disease interactions, and other combinations of those for and updated list.
- Allergy Information: cross referencing all associated chemical compounds.
- Updated MRP and Pack Size: Although seemingly commercial, it is essential for patient confidence and avoidance of invoice mistakes.
These examples highlight the concern as to why most new companies and developers cannot simply “scrape” a data set off the internet. That data is unverified and static, and extremely dangerous for the purpose it is meant to serve.
The Foundation of The Solution: Managed Data
Millions of lives are being saved as a result of the new shift to digital healthcare in India. However, this innovation is completely reliant on the quality of the data. As the saying goes, you would not build a hospital on an unstable foundation. In the same regard, One must not build a health platform on an unstable Drug Database.
The only way to guarantee the safety of the patients is to use a Drug Formulary that is:
- Professionally Curated: Designed and crafted by pharmacists alongside data specialists, not scrapers.
- Continuously Updated: New drugs, new warnings, and changes in pricing are updated on a daily or weekly basis.
- Comprehensive and Standardized: Employs and standardized multi-tier system architecture neutral structure databases which plug & play into any software across the globe without the ambiguity.
This is the core mission of Data requisite. We understood the essence of digital health and the need for pharmaceutical data to rest on a single, verifiable source. The result of years of work and dedication, our 6 lakhs plus product database, build strong partnerships because of its trusted, easy to integrate value.
Conclusion:
An All-medicine Name List is not a sum of rows and columns on a spreadsheet. It is a safety net, digital of course.
It is remarkable how, when there is a need to stop an anaphylactic reaction, it does exactly that. It knows how to and does correctly dose a child who needs a dose of medicine. It alerts a pharmacist before she is allowed to give a dangerous cocktail to a patient. It makes certain that the drug is ready in the emergency room for the patient who needs it.
Unfortunately, it is in the case of the latter that the safety net is absent.
For every healthcare and medicine startup’s, the developers, the pharmacists, there is a lesson: The quality of your list of medicines is a sad reflection of your organization when it comes to the patient safety. The Drug Database professionally documented, cross checked, and maintained on a constant basis is not an IT expenditure, it is a life saver. The investment in a Drug Database professionally documented, cross checked, and maintained on a constant basis is not an IT expenditure, it is a life saver.
Also Read: What Makes Data Requisite’s All Medicine Name List Different from Others in India
