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Patient organisation

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Well-informed physicians can no longer rely solely on their own knowledge and experience when making pharmacotherapeutic decisions. Healthcare professionals increasingly need to also make use of supporting information systems, such as Prescriptor.

Deciding is navigating

This is comparable with a society that relies increasingly on real-time navigation systems, despite the traditional road maps, street plans and directions. This parallel gains relevance in the prescription of medication: on the one hand, physicians want to provide the best possible proposal for a route (regular guidelines), while on the other hand, road works, detours and traffic jams (specific complications) impact the choice of the route. Both information streams need to be incorporated: real-time, on the work floor and during the prescription process. Prescriptor provides support within pharmacotherapy, by combining regular guidelines with considerations that are specific for each individual.

Drug safety

Drug safety is becoming an increasingly important aspect of medication prescription. The number of - elderly - patients currently in care of a physician for various chronic complaints, is increasing. This means that not only medication usage is increasing, but the nature of the care given also becomes more complex, with a greater risk of complications and incidents.

The figures are there for clarification: At the moment, the Netherlands has 2.4 million inhabitants who are 65 years of age or older. This number will have risen to 2.8 million by the end of 2013 (or 17% of the entire population). The ageing population will burden the Dutch health care system with an increasing incidence of chronic patients and chronic use of medication. It is estimated that there are currently nearly 20,000 medication-related hospital admissions per year in the Netherlands.

Up-to-date information

To solve this complex problem, Prescriptor acts as a navigation system for pharmacotherapy. It obtains and integrates information from various sources, including professional guidelines, medical encyclopaedias, research et cetera. Prescriptor creates potential recommendations for high-quality, safe medication, which is instantly applicable by physicians on the workfloor. Moreover, the Prescriptor software is system-independent: It can be linked to any healthcare IT system with and EHR. Prescriptor includes relevant patient characteristics in its therapeutic recommendation, which is made possible by the link with the patient's medical file. Prescriptor enables physicians to have access to up-to-date information about the patient's situation, medication and relevant medical context at all times.