From convenience, saved time, and reduced potential of prescription fraud to protecting patient data, this digital prescribing solution scores many wins.
At Christine McGinley’s last physical, her doctor gave her a handwritten prescription — which she promptly lost. “I don’t know what shocked me more — the fact that I needed the prescription, the fact that I lost it, or the fact that it was handwritten in our digital world,” she says.
Though health tech has evolved substantially, prescriptions are a lagging area. Many are still done by paper or fax transmission, which causes problems such as lost or misplaced prescriptions, delays from dropped faxes, missed phone calls or illegible physician handwriting, and potential for prescription fraud.
Just finding time to drop off and pick up a prescription can be challenging, as Poonam Khanna found when her busy schedule prevented her from getting to a pharmacist for a prescription that she needed to start taking immediately. “I couldn’t help thinking that an e-prescription through PrescribeIT® would have made things a bit more convenient,” she says.
PrescribeIT® is a national e-prescribing service that was developed by the Canada Health Infoway, an independent, federally funded non-profit organization focused on enhancing access to digital health information and services for Canadians. PrescribeIT® lets prescribers like physicians and nurse practitioners electronically transmit a prescription directly from an electronic medical record to the patient’s pharmacy of choice.
From a patient perspective, e-prescribing is a simple digital solution that supports medication management and patient safety
McGinley
Aside from making prescription transmission more convenient, PrescribeIT® does away with phoning, faxing, and writing replacement prescriptions — freeing doctors to spend more time on patient care. It also reduces the risk of medication errors and lost or misplaced prescriptions for patients and enables faster and more efficient communication between physicians and pharmacists to discuss a patient’s medication plan and ensure medication safety and adherence. With many built-in security and privacy safeguards, PrescribeIT® reduces the risk of prescription fraud and protects patient data from commercial use.
