An electronic medical records system was introduced in Okayama University hospital in May, 2003. We connected this system to the narcotics management database in the department of pharmacy to enable narcotics management to be performed properly and efficiently. The new system allows the content of narcotics prescriptions input by doctors to be reflected in the medical records. Simultaneously, this information, which consists of the prescription number, date, amount of drug and name of the department and the ID number, name, and the age of the patient, is transmitted to the narcotics management database in the department of pharmacy using Microsoft Access. It is used to make various records such as medicine lists, usage records of narcotics injections, receipt and supply lists.
The transmission of electronic clinical record data to the narcotics management database has shortened the time for the management of narcotics as compared with the previous manual practice and has helped raise the efficiency of narcotics management.
