Great Ormond Street implements electronic prescribing

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust has begun implementation of JAC’s Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) System.

The new EPMA system now provides clinicians at the trust with software for the electronic prescribing and administration of medicines on a nephrology ward, and work has now begun on introducing the system into other wards and outpatient prescribing.

Staff on the nephrology ward are now using mobile computers operating on the trust’s wireless network to prescribe and administer medicines at the bedside, providing them with improved availability, legibility and completeness of both patient and drug data.

Robert Tysalll-Blay, CEO of JAC, described the GOSH system as an "important milestone in paediatric care". He told E-Health Insider that the trust’s procurement of the new system had gone through just ahead of the national programme and that GOSH was "given a special dispensation to continue".

An initial evaluation phase of the medicines management system is due to be completed in January in urology and theatres. A phased trust-wide roll out will then follow, which will include additional software necessary for EPMA in a paediatric hospital. "Drug prescribing is much more complex in paediatric settings," said Tysall-Blay.

He explained that paediatric care provides particular challenges due to the size of babies and the small quantities of drugs they can be safely prescribed "babies especially change weight over a short period of time", and "their drug tolerances are very low".

Following their move to a new site, clinicians will also be able to prescribe electronically for nephrology outpatients. Patients will see additional benefits through the electronic transmission of their prescriptions to the pharmacy.

The JAC Pharmacy Management System was first installed this April, providing the trust with a pharmacy drug database fully integrated with the EPMA system. The system provides users with clinical decision support using drug data supplied by their partners First DataBank Europe (FDBE).

Dr William van’t Hoff, Consultant Paediatric Nephrologist and Clinical Chair for Nephro-Urology said: ‘We have been delighted with the introduction of EPMA into the renal Unit. Our nursing and medical staff have readily adopted it and found it to be very helpful in prescribing and administering medicines within a high-dependency, specialist paediatric ward."

Dr van’t Hoff added: "EPMA has already proved robust and dependable; we are studying its effectiveness in improving the safety and efficiency of prescribing."

As a joint venture, JAC, FDBE and GOSH are funding a PhD studentship to look at the impact of EPMA on the quality of prescribing and administration of medicines in a paediatric environment.

Tysall-Blay said that it was hoped the three year research project "will provide detailed information on the impact on e-prescribing and electronic medicines management in a UK paediatric setting".

Graham Moule, customer services manager for JAC commented: "Our Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration system has already been successfully installed in a variety of clinical settings but this is the first implementation of our system in a paediatric NHS Trust and it will be closely observed by leading paediatric healthcare establishments throughout the UK."

Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust and the University College of London‘s Institute of Child Health together form an international centre of excellence for treating sick children.