Dispensing: Pharmacy Information Systems

Medication delivery and administration, especially in inpatient settings, are complex and error prone processes. The multiple dimensions and levels of detail to which specific drugs must be specified, the numbers of handoffs and transformations (calculation and conversion) of patient and drug specific data that must occur, and the manipulations (compounding, dilution, and dose preparation), make medication delivery highly vulnerable to variation and errors of commission and omission. In pediatrics, these complexities (and the potential for error and harm) are further magnified by the special needs of children: universal weight-based or body surface area-based dosing, the need for alternative drug forms and routes of administration, differential pharmacokinetics in developing physiologic systems and the long-term and cumulative effects of drugs. To improve pediatric medication safety, automation, and information technology (IT) are used to standardize and streamline the drug and associated data processes.