According to a 2006 report by the National Academies of Science’s Institute of Medicine (IOM), medication mistakes due to doctors’ sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 and injures 1.5 million people annually!
These staggering figures are a result of unclear abbreviations and dosage indications of the billions of prescriptions written every year.
In an effort to address the problem, a coalition of health care companies and technology firms have launched a campaign aimed to encourage all U.S. doctors to write electronic prescriptions for free. To do that, National e-prescribing Patient Safety Initiative (NEPSI) offers doctors access to eRx Now, a web-based tool they can use to write prescriptions, check for potentially harmful drug interactions and ensure that pharmacies provide appropriate medications and dosages.
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Source: Metatech
Photo: DarkoStojanovic / Pixabay, Wikimedia