Improving medication management

Introduction

Medication management is the foundation of high-quality healthcare. It refers to prescribing, dispensing, and monitoring medications to ensure that the right medications are given to patients at the right time, in the right doses, and via the correct route, reducing the possibility of medication errors. In all the steps involved, there are complexities that, if managed correctly, can ensure patient safety and optimal outcomes, and if not, could lead to worse outcomes for patients and even death. Healthcare providers continuously look for ways to improve medication management to ensure patient safety, and regardless of the challenges medical teams face, such as unintentional medication errors, medication non-adherence, and the increasing number of prescriptions currently received by practitioners, patient safety has to be a priority. Medication management will improve hospital admission and readmission rates and ensure optimal health outcomes.
Custom healthcare software product development is now critical in assisting with medication management. As a key experts explains: ‘Custom healthcare software stands ahead of off-the-shell software offerings because it is designed for a particular segment of the healthcare providers community. It is intended for them specifically; it suits their needs better, and, therefore, it can streamline and even automate many processes that software solutions can facilitate, from more efficient electronic prescribing to inventory management and patient adherence tracking. Besides, it should integrate directly with electronic health records (EHR) and other healthcare systems. In that case, we are looking at a single custom-centralized platform that combines data in a single, accurate location, providing patients’ and customers’ information to healthcare providers in real-time and, thus, allowing them to make better-informed decisions.’
Custom healthcare software development services can address different problems in various healthcare facilities. With custom healthcare software that fits the healthcare provider's needs, it is possible to implement more effective workflows and compliance and meet patient profiles. Tasks such as better coordination between pharmacists and doctors or medication reconciliation for patients with chronic conditions can be catered to with custom medication solutions.

The importance of effective medication management in healthcare

Managing medications is an essential part of healthcare. Still, it currently faces several common problems that often threaten patient safety and outcomes, such as medication errors, patient non-adherence, medicine affordability, and lack of adverse drug events. These problems have the worst effects on the most vulnerable people who use medications the most: those with multiple chronic conditions. We need a better way to manage medications. Medication errors are the most commonly reported sentinel events by medical professionals. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 1.5 million people in the United States experience a medication error every year, which leads to more hospitalizations and increased mortality. Medication safety is a priority yet remains a top challenge for healthcare professionals. One increasingly important problem related to medication management is patient non-adherence. Patient non-adherence with their care plan is defined as the failure of a patient to properly follow a prescribed medical care plan for various reasons, including forgetfulness, not understanding the instructions or the intention of avoiding medication. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports a staggering 50 percent of patients do not adhere to their medications, which can result in the worsening of the disease and less control over chronic conditions.
Archaic inefficiencies related to monitoring prescriptions pose an additional hurdle that affects efficient medication management. Poor communication between healthcare teams, medication delivery delays, dosing errors, missed refills, and incorrect doses are a nightmare for the care team. These inefficiencies are further exacerbated by a need for coordination between pharmacies, healthcare providers, and patients. A 2007 article published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine estimated that nearly one in five prescriptions are never fulfilled, highlighting inefficiencies that can have significant clinical ramifications. Streamlined and efficient medication management systems make a difference in combating such problems so patients get their medications correctly, timely, and safely.

How custom healthcare software solves medication management challenges

Custom healthcare software solutions can address some of the key issues of medication management in a way that off-the-shelf software cannot. It works because the software can match the pharmacy’s workflow instead of requiring the workflow to bend to fit. For more extensive facilities with their software for recording and tracking dosages, a custom solution can help fill some of the gaps. It will work seamlessly with the existing system. Whether it’s a larger facility that needs help automating the writing of prescriptions, tracking medication inventories, or managing patient adherence, or if a smaller facility needs assistance with medication reconciliation that addresses multiple departments or specialties or tracking and adjusts dosages and monitors patients – a custom solution can help streamline the process to the pharmacy’s workflow, reducing manual input and minimizing the chance for error.
Helping reduce medication errors and improve patient safety is one of the most significant advantages of having custom healthcare software. The point-of-care alerting of drug-drug interactions, allergies, over/under dosing, alerts to significant laboratory results, barcode scanning for medication administration (to reduce the potential for medication error), and tracking of patient adherence and automation of patient/caregiver reminders are just some of the safeguards that can be provided through custom systems to aid providers, nurses, and pharmacists in their efforts to reduce mistakes. Notifying providers of the proper timing of drug administration (e.g., antibiotics vs. regular oral medication), tracking critical laboratory values, and making input/retrieval at the point of care much easier are just a few of the many features of custom systems.
When customized medication management software is integrated with existing technologies, such as electronic health records (EHRs), care and safety greatly improve. Syncing the medication information with a complete picture of the patient’s health statistics – including previous prescriptions, allergies, and care plans – enables healthcare providers to obtain a more accurate and complete assessment of the patient’s medical profile and history. It also allows for more coordination between physicians, pharmacists, and other caregivers, such as nurses, using shared medication orders that are accurate, up-to-date, and easily accessible within one unified computer system. So, if a patient’s status or plan of care changes, the software would be programmed to update all of the various systems automatically at once instead of going back to various electronic or paper records to make all the necessary changes. By using systems to integrate medication orders across multiple systems and to embed caregiver workflows directly within the systems to support safer and more effective medication-related practices, we can expect outcomes to improve.

Key features of custom medication management software

Medication tracking and monitoring are included in many custom medication management software features. This ability to track medications in real time gives healthcare providers a better view of what happens at each stage of the medication’s journey between the dispensary and the patient’s body. Automated tracking enables healthcare staff to see how and when each medication is dispensed and helps medical personnel track medication inventories, thus avoiding medication shortages and the waste that results from having too many medicines on the shelves.
Automated alerts for adherence assistance are key to delivering better outcomes because adherence is an issue they can help address. These alerts can remind patients when they need to take a medication and remind them to take a dose when they miss it, which can be particularly helpful for those with chronic conditions or complex medication regimens. For healthcare professionals, automated adherence monitoring can generate reports identifying patients at elevated risk of non-adherence. This timely information can support interventions to lower the chances of poor health outcomes.
Healthcare custom software development makes inventory, prescription management, and renewals easy for health providers and patients alike. New prescriptions or renewals can be created or generated with only a few mouse clicks, and the software can notify patients of impending prescription renewal dates so they don’t slip through the cracks.
The integration with the pharmacy management systems represents the main feature, bringing together healthcare providers and pharmacists in a comprehensive ecosystem. This feature enables a ‘just-in-time’ push mechanism for dispensing prescriptions to the pharmacy, minimizing manual human errors related to dosing recommendations and improving patient compliance. Furthermore, it allows real-time inventory management for all the products, so pharmacists are aware of stock levels and order medicines promptly, preventing delays in treatment and enhancing patient satisfaction.
Medication administration reporting and analytics provide information on medication use within a healthcare facility. Analytics tools in custom software generate detailed reports about how often medication is administered and which patients and pharmacists missed administering the right medication at the stipulated time. This information is useful for planning more effective medication administration for the hospital.

Benefits of custom medication management software

The most significant advantages of custom medication management software are increased patient safety and reduced medication errors. Prescription entry, dosage calculations, and administration tracking are all automated, drastically reducing human error from miscommunications, incorrect data entry, or manual handling. Drug interaction alerts, allergy warnings, and barcode scanning all ensure that the proper medication is given to the right patient more frequently, reducing the incidence of adverse drug events and increasing the overall quality of patient care.
Automated reminders and individualized medication schedules, in combination with real-time tracking to encourage patients to stick to medication schedules, can improve adherence, especially for people with chronic conditions or complex medication regimens. Patients can receive electronic reminders to take medications daily through built-in custom software connected to their mobile apps or text messages.
A further advantage for healthcare providers is improved operational efficiency. The AI-powered management of the prescribed drugs through automation of prescription processing, inventory management, and medication reconciliation allows healthcare personnel to spend more time with their patients rather than on clerical work. It also reduces delays in medication delivery or dosage errors due to manual workflow, thereby paving the way for faster work processes and better use of institutional resources overall.
Custom software provides better information to clinical decision-making, leading to better care delivery. Detailed reporting and analytics using custom software allow providers to have ‘real-time’ data on drug usage, adherence, and outcomes and, therefore, to make more informed decisions on patient treatment plans. Its data-driven approach helps any care management to be proactive about medication adjustments, tracking patient progress, and providing more tailored treatment, achieving optimal health outcomes.

The role of EHR integration in medication management

Integrating medication management software with existing electronic health records (EHRs), where patient information is centralized, will improve communication and coordination between all care team members. Integrating EHRs will also help ensure that providers, pharmacists, and nurses have access to current and accurate information in real-time, such as medications taken, patients’ allergies, and protein and renal levels, so everyone caring for a patient has the same information at their fingertips. This saves time and confusion by avoiding the need to copy over information into multiple systems, thus ensuring that everyone involved in the care is provided with current, accurate information. This integration will also help monitor medication administration and adherence, allowing providers to take action promptly.
Data sharing among pharmacies, clinicians, and healthcare providers helps curb medication errors and minimize duplication of drug treatment. Suppose medication management software is tied to EHRs in a closed loop. In that case, orders can be automatically sent to a patient’s pharmacy, decreasing the likelihood of a transcription error or misunderstanding of the dose requested by the prescriber. Information about the medications already prescribed by other providers can also be transmitted, thereby helping to avoid duplicating therapies or drug interactions that could be harmful. A clear line of communication between the two ensures that all aspects of the medication plan are coordinated, thus resulting in a safer, more effective treatment strategy.

Custom software solutions for pharmacy management

By tracking their pharmacy’s inventory data via custom software development for healthcare, pharmacies can significantly streamline their operations. They can monitor real-time stock levels, impending expiration dates, and re-order alerts, ensuring that the pharmacy and its patients never run out of medications while avoiding overstocking and excess waste. Furthermore, customizing a solution to keep track of the pharmacy’s high-demand medications ultimately allows pharmacists to plan for the future and optimize their inventory to reduce future waste and operational inefficiencies.
Custom-coded pharmacy software can also facilitate routine requests for refills and send automated notifications to patients when renewals are approaching, which can keep patients on target and ensure they don’t miss essential doses. Staff also spend less time answering basic questions if pharmacy functionality is designed into IT systems that patients’ physicians use. Such integrated systems can enable patients to send online messages or use mobile apps for refill requests – messages that the system can then route directly to the pharmacy queue for automatic processing. All these examples of what can be automated might seem purely routine. Still, the cumulative savings for a pharmacy workforce is significant time and effort, resulting in lower costs to patients and more satisfaction with staff’s roles.

Future trends in medication management with custom healthcare software

Medication management activities will soon undergo a transformation, courtesy of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), which can employ the analysis of millions of data points of a patient’s history and behaviors for predictively modeling their adherence patterns and identifying ways for optimizing dosage recommendations. AI algorithms can help surface forestalled insights into drug interactions before they happen, empowering the stakeholders in a patient’s care to facilitate safer decisions with greater ease. With software institutions that have greater intelligence, physicians can tailor medication plans to patient-specific variables such as gender, age, metabolism, and size. Moreover, ML algorithms can flag anomalies detected in prescription order patterns or medication usage, enabling proactive intervention before errors or adverse events occur. All these actions ultimately increase patient safety.
Telemedicine is also becoming vital in remote prescription management, making the process more available and convenient for staff and clients. Physicians can prescribe medications during remote consultations via custom healthcare mobile app development that integrates telehealth services with the pharmacy, allowing real-time dispensing. This capability is handy for staff and clients residing in more rural or underserved areas who may have historically been unable to access in-person care. Custom medication management software provides prescription management at scale, reducing the time between diagnosis and treatment, allowing staff to assist more patients, and providing more effective patient adherence via renewed communication and prescriptions.

Conclusion

To sum it up, custom healthcare software can support a safer, more effective management of medications. Addressing three main issues relevant to medication safety, such software can improve patient adherence, enhance safety, and provide optimal workflows for prescribers and toolkits for improving medication safety. Moreover, with the prospective development and improvements in AI and machine learning in medicine that we will likely witness, most probably, in the coming years, as well as the increase in telemedicine services – that is, the delivery of health care from a distance – there is a pressing need for custom solutions like healthcare mobile app development services to optimize medication management aimed at delivering better patient outcomes while reducing costs.

People Also Ask (PAA) questions

1. What is medication management in healthcare?
   Medication management involves overseeing the prescribing, dispensing, and administering of medications to ensure patients receive the correct treatment at the right time. It includes monitoring adherence, avoiding drug interactions, and ensuring patient safety.
2. How does custom healthcare software improve medication management?
   Custom healthcare software improves medication management by automating processes, reducing manual errors, tracking patient adherence, and integrating with EHR systems to provide a comprehensive view of a patient’s medication history.
3. What are the benefits of medication management software?
   Patient safety is increased, medication adherence improves, medication errors are reduced, the prescription process is streamlined, and the real-time tracking of medication inventories saves on healthcare operating expenses.
4. How can custom software reduce medication errors in healthcare?
   Custom software automates dosage calculation, provides real-time alerts for allergies, can flag drug-drug interactions, and allows for the use of barcode verification on medication, providing a check-and-double-check system to increase the accuracy and safety of medication delivery.
5. What features should be included in medication management software?
   Features include medication tracking, automated adherence alerts, prescribing and interaction checking, transmitting refills to pharmacies, integration with EHR and related pharmacy systems, and detailed reporting, allowing users to view their medicine usage and measure reporting against pharmacy claims and EHR data.
6. How does EHR integration help with medication management?
   Integration of EHRs has the potential to facilitate central access to a patient’s medication information, provide real-time alerts among team members, decrease the occurrence of medication and care errors, and ensure that the most accurate, current information is accessible to all clinicians who need it to deliver safe patient care.
7. What is the future of medication management in healthcare?
   Artificial intelligence and machine learning will enhance medication management, such as tailoring the medication plan, predicting adherence patterns, and automating error prevention. Patient monitoring and prescription management will become increasingly possible through telemedicine.
8. How can custom software improve pharmacy operations?
   It automates inventory tracking but also helps track refill requests. It allows pharmacies to communicate directly with patients to request renewals, drop remedial refill chores, and streamline operations.
9. What are common challenges in medication management for healthcare providers?
   These issues include medication errors, patient non-adherence, costly inefficiencies in prescription tracking, lack of coordination between care teams, trying to manage very complex medication regimens on a variety of systems if patients are switching between facilities or locations, and many others.
10. How does medication management software improve patient safety?
    Patient safety is improved through medication management software, which can automatically flag contraindications and dosing errors. It also enables accurate dispensing and monitors adherence through reminder and monitoring tools.