A smart medication recommendation model for the electronic prescription

• This model is to introduce a new concept called Mean Prescription Rank of prescriptions.
• The physicians will able to select relevant medications even in the case of inappropriate (unintentional) selection.
• To enhance efficiency of the e-prescribing system.

BackgroundThe report from the Institute of Medicine, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System in 1999 drew a special attention towards preventable medical errors and patient safety. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 and federal criteria of ‘Meaningful use’ stage 1 mandated e-prescribing to be used by eligible providers in order to access Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments. Inappropriate prescribing has been identified as a preventable cause of at least 20% of drug-related adverse events. A few studies reported system-related errors and have offered targeted recommendations on improving and enhancing e-prescribing system.ObjectiveThis study aims to enhance efficiency of the e-prescribing system by shortening the medication list, reducing the risk of inappropriate selection of medication, as well as in reducing the prescribing time of physicians.Method103.48 million prescriptions from Taiwan's national health insurance claim data were used to compute Diagnosis-Medication association. Furthermore, 100,000 prescriptions were randomly selected to develop a smart medication recommendation model by using association rules of data mining.Results and conclusionThe important contribution of this model is to introduce a new concept called Mean Prescription Rank (MPR) of prescriptions and Coverage Rate (CR) of prescriptions. A proactive medication list (PML) was computed using MPR and CR. With this model the medication drop-down menu is significantly shortened, thereby reducing medication selection errors and prescription times. The physicians will still select relevant medications even in the case of inappropriate (unintentional) selection.