College to host new conference on medication errors

The UA College of Pharmacy will host a first-of-its-kind national conference Oct. 13 and 14, 2009, on using health information technology (IT) to improve patient safety. The event will be in Rockville, Md., at the Pharmacopeia Meetings Center. The conference is sponsored primarily by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The brainchild of Daniel Malone, professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice and Science, the conference is titled “Generating, Evaluating and Implementing Evidence for Drug-Drug Interactions in Health Information Technology To Improve Patient Safety: A Multi-Stakeholder Conference.”

The team that won the grant was comprised of Malone; John Murphy, associate dean; Amy Grizzle, assistant director of the Center for Health Outcomes and PharmacoEconomic Research; Lisa Hines, clinical pharmacist in the center; and Lynne Mascarella, director of continuing education.

Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are preventable medication errors, yet millions of Americans are exposed to clinically important interactions each year. Health information technology systems have incorporated the ability to recognize DDIs and warn prescribers of potential dangers, but the resulting increase in patient safety has been marginal.

“This is due in part,” says Malone, “to the fact that the alerts may be overly sensitive: they warn of perhaps too many things, in effect, ‘cry wolf,’ so users sometimes override them. That’s why we want to have this conference: to evaluate the DDI evidence base and the health IT systems that use it, and explore ways to improve the systems so they’re more effective at increasing patient safety.”

Attendance at the conference is by invitation only. According to Malone, 100 individuals were invited from a variety of groups, including health IT companies, the FDA, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and relevant medicine and pharmacy organizations such as the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, the American College of Physicians and the AHRQ.

During the conference, participants will determine the next steps to take in improving health IT to improve patient safety. Conference proceedings will be published.

Malone and his team received a $50,000 grant from the AHRQ to put on the conference. Other companies, including First DataBank, Lexicomp, Gold Standard, Wolters-Kluwer Health, and ePocrates also provided funding. Additional support for the conference is needed; to contribute, contact the UA College of Pharmacy office of continuing education.

Posted Sept. 1, 2009