Medication, Integration and quality control

Description

The medication systems at the hospitals in Northern Norway are paper based. The quality is insufficient. Patients’ drug treatment is increasingly more complicated. Today easy access to all the important data and ability to present the data in an understandable way together with an overview of the medication is lacking. Research shows that medication errors occurs in 20 % of all patient treatment pathways, and minimum 1000 patients dies each year from adverse drug reactions and improper drug use in Norway.

There is a general perception both from health care professionals and authorities that information technology could help improve the issues mentioned above, but previous experience has shown that a successful electronic medication system is hard to achieve in practice. A key problem is that healthcare is a complex, uncertain environment and there are a great many processes involved in medications management. Empirically, the project will study the implementation of a new electronic medication management system (EMMS) in the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority.

Goals

The goal is to achieve a successful implementation of an EMMS in the Northern Norway Regional Health Authority.

Method

The methods are qualitative. The data are collected through extensive interviewing and observations of different health personnel (physicians, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) set in the broader context of the health care organization.