Abstract
Recently hospital pharmacists have been devoting more energy to inpatients rather than outpatients, and regarding injections it is increasingly more important to predict and avoid interactions between or among them simply to assort them.
In this study, to secure the stability and safety of injections prescribed for inpatients by doctors, we developed a clinically useful computer system to check some incompatibilities between medicines. The database used in the computer system for chemical interactions comprised of information on combinations between two drugs obtained from formal textbooks or the literature, while that for physical interactions included the results of the pH change examination for each medicine.
When comparing the two periods during 6 months before and after introducing this system, the incidence of turbidity due to interactions and economical loss after introduction were substantially smaller than those before introduction, thus suggesting that this system could qualitatively and economically improve the service for injections performed by hospital pharmacists. In addition, suggestions made by doctors and nurses using this system have resulted in clinically favorable findings, and consequently this system is highly evaluated at our hospital.
Furthermore, at one month after introducing this system, it was shown to be very useful for particularly avoiding interactions in the same syringe when mixing two medicines or more.
