Abstract
With the progress of IT at medical institutions, electronic medical record systems, other related department systems and the number of masters and master databases are increasing. Masters for drugs (drug masters) in particular are related to almost all department systems, not to mention ordering systems and medical systems. And their inconsistency may pose a problem for the safety management as well as for the inventory management. Since the introduction of a new distribution system at Toyota Memorial Hospital in November 1999, we have unified the management of three systems using the master management tool: the distribution, the claiming and the ordering system. However, since the introduction of the electronic medical record system and other related department systems in September 2003, drug masters increased remarkable, and it was learned that, due to a failure of timely conveyance of master information to each department, the delay in master maintenance work interfered with the medical practice. In addition, the hospital aims for a new drug inventory management linked with the electronic medical record system and improvement in management accuracy is an essential task. Therefore, we completely improved the master management tool of the distribution system and changed the conventional operation with vouchers to an operation utilizing shared files in the hospital e-mail system and the hospital intranet at the same time. As a result total working hours and the number of days required before completion of registrations were substantially shortened. We also have now completed linkage with the dispensing system and will report about this step in the future.
