Computerized surveillance of adverse drug events in hospital patients

• HIT Description: HELP, which is a computerized medical record that contains an integrated patient database that includes pharmacy, laboratory, surgery, and radiology data, along with an interactive modular knowledge base that continually analyzes information contained in the computerized medical record. More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: Assess adverse drug events
  
• Years of study: 1989-1990
  
• Study Design: Case series
  
• Outcomes: Rate of adverse drug events
  

• Settings:  This study was performed at the LDS Hospital, which is a tertiary-care hospital affiliated with the University of Utah School of Medicine.
• Evaluation Method: The HELP system had been in operation for 15 years. It was used to allow voluntary reporting of potential Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) and also used algorithms for the automatics detection of potential ADEs. During the study period 36,653 patients were admitted to the hospital and were concurrently monitored for the occurrence of ADEs.
• Costs: No cost data were reported.
• Clinical Outcomes: 731 ADEs were detected and verified among 648 patients, giving an overall ADE rate of 1.67%. 9 of these ADEs were reported by the traditional voluntary reporting method. The most common ADEs were in narcotic analgesics (31%), anti-infectives (23.3%), cardiovascular agents (19.4%), anti-coagulants (9.3%).