This dilemma affects all information managed in hospitals but for this article I will focus on the problems related to the medication databases currently available on the market. I mean the national (in the country’s language) reference (on paper or the internet) vademecums – which provide diffuse, incomplete (because they are financed by the industry itself) and barely structured information. This immediately makes their integration with computer applications difficult, but above all prevents them from being linked to Electronic Health Records in hospitals and other healthcare bodies. When they issue interaction warnings they base these on a compatibility calculation between active substances regardless of the dosage or means of application. Furthermore, solutions that work with structured data do not link to information about the brands sold in each territory and display this information in English which, very often, represents a barrier to clinics who are used to working with information in Spanish.
So how can we overcome these barriers?
Vademecum Data Solutions is a safe complement to the North American Medication Databases used by healthcare professionals. This is due to the fact that it gathers data from official medication catalogues (published for example, by COFEPRIS [Mexico] or ISP [Chile]), linking them with powerful CDS (Clinical Decision Support) modules that can alert the clinic of interactions or side effects related to a prescription of generic or commercial brands (as long as the medications are authorized in the country).
Furthermore, each item of each product is structured according to interoperable codes that allow the clinic to confirm medication interactions with the clinical information available in Spanish and to consult possible side effects based on international codes such as ATC, CIE10 and LOINC.
The Rise of e-health in Latin America
Latin America is currently facing an exciting challenge with regard to computerization of healthcare, or e-health, as the region is presently implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR), and thus having to meet all the challenges associated with this process. This implementation requires transversal information that can be accessed by the clinics and pharmacists, computer technicians working in hospitals and healthcare organizations who are involved in Electronic Health Record Implementation (EHR) projects at their respective centers.
To illustrate further, the success of Vademecum Internacional and Vidal – UBM Medica Group – in markets as specific and different as the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, Honduras, Chile, Spain and France shows that clinics and healthcare bodies need a partner that can offer geo-localized solutions both in terms of language and local administrative information. It is also the fruit of first-hand analysis of the existing needs and characteristics of those countries for the adaption of information and participation in the implementation of EHRs. This provides an enormous competitive advantage compared to the recognized American standards such as Micromedex, Lexi-Comp (Wolters Kluwer) and First Data Bank, among others.
As Alejandro Mauro, National Coordinator of Clinical Terminology and Computer Standards of the Chilean Ministry of Health stated in a recent article that referred to increasing computerization of the Healthcare Systems, a really “digital hospital” or “digital healthcare service” will be able to guarantee the meaning, integrity, confidentiality and availability of information, allowing continuous electronic care that can operate with other agents inside and outside the service. And that is only possible with the integration of a structured and coded medication database.
