Three poster presentations to be presented by the clinical pharmacy team of First DataBank

First DataBank, a leading provider of drug databases that help drive patient safety, today announced that members of the company’s clinical pharmacy team, knowledgeable in the application of drug information systems for safe medication prescribing and clinical decision support in pediatrics, will present three poster presentations at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics, October 17-20, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The poster presentations will be held in the Council on Clinical Information Technology session on Sunday, October 18, 2009 from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM, in Room 209C of the Washington Convention Center.

According to The Joint Commission, errors associated with medications are believed to be the most common type of medical error and are a significant cause of preventable adverse events. Experts agree that medication errors within the pediatric population have the potential to cause harm at a higher rate than in the adult population. Medication dosing errors are more common in pediatric versus adult patients because of weight-based dosing calculations and fractional dosing, which can result in the misplacement of decimal points in the calculated pediatric dose.

First DataBank’s National Drug Data File (NDDF) Plus™, one of the healthcare industry’s most widely used sources of up-to-date drug information, supports safe medication prescribing throughout the medication use process. The database also adheres to the American Academy of Pediatrics’ electronic prescribing guidelines that address the issues of weight-based calculation and dose screening specific for pediatric populations. The database also helps system developers designing healthcare information technology systems for electronic health records (EHR), computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE) and electronic prescribing systems comply with certification standards including those developed by the Child Health Work Group within CCHIT.

The posters to be presented will demonstrate various applications in the use of First DataBank drug databases to support medication-related clinical decision support in the pediatric population:

Poster 6986
Application of Electronic Prescribing Standards for Pediatric Patients
Monica F. Robbins B.S., M.S., PharmD., R.Ph., Dennis Hays, PharmD., R.Ph., Karen Ratzman, MBA, R.Ph. and D. Sue Rhodes, Knowledge Base Services, First DataBank, Indianapolis, IN

Poster 7030
Use of Dose Screening to Reduce and Prevent Pediatric Medication Errors
Monica F. Robbins B.S., M.S., PharmD., R.Ph., Dennis Hays, PharmD., R.Ph., Karen Ratzman, MBA, R.Ph. and D. Sue Rhodes, Knowledge Base Services, First DataBank, Indianapolis, IN

Poster 7809
Empowering Clinicians and Patients That Utilize Health Information Technology and Medication-Related Decision Support
Colleen DeLizza R.Ph. Joan E. Kapusnik-Uner, Pharm.D. and Clifton Louie, RPh, DPA, First DataBank, South San Francisco, CA