This study is a multi-disciplinary collaboration between the Universities of Edinburgh, Birmingham, and Nottingham that will undertake a multi-faceted programme of work to inform important national deliberations on the safe, effective, and efficient procurement and implementation of ePrescribing systems into hospitals in England. A number of international benchmark studies have now demonstrated that prescribing errors are common and are responsible for considerable – potentially avoidable – morbidity and mortality.
Given the increasing complexity of prescribing decisions, the risk of prescribing-related iatrogenic harm is likely to increase yet further. There is then a pressing need to identify effective approaches to improving the safety of prescribing. Interest is, in particular, converging on the potential offered by computerised order entry and related advanced decision support systems. These systems, however, vary very considerably in functionality, inter-operability, and costs. As such, this project aims to: describe the procurement, implementation, adoption, and maintenance of the basic and more advanced ePrescribing systems; estimate their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness; and develop best practice recommendations for procurement and a toolkit for their successful integration into NHS hospitals.