Patient safety; necessity for attention to information technology

ABSTRACT

Patient safety is one of the most important aspects of health care, but the medical errors and specifically medication errors make health care environment dangerous. Untimely access to the information at the time of decision- making and weak communication among the health care providers are the main causes of medication errors. According to expert's opinions, using the information technology is suitable approach to having access to timely information and to improving the relationships among specialists, and therefore; to decrease the medication errors. A variety of IT products such as computerized physician order entry [CPOE], decision support systems [DSS], computerized medication administration record, point of care barcode-based medication administration systems [BCMA] were designed to support health care providers in medication administration processes. This study shows that these IT products have the potentials to affect health care provider's behavior in drugs administration and to reduce medication errors