Evaluation of the medication sketch artist, a new method of determining unknown patient medications.

Medication errors are responsible for a significant number of hospital admissions, and significant morbidity and mortality. Many of these errors result from differences in physicians' and patients' understanding of medications. Health care providers think in terms of medication name and dose, however patients remember size, shape, and markings of their medications more frequently than the names. The Medication Sketch Artist was developed to be a graphically interfaced medication identification system to aid in physician-patient communication. This pilot study evaluated the software's ability to identify medications described from memory by volunteers. Out of 25 pills, each described 5 separate times, there were 80 correct identifications, and 9 identifications of the correct medication, but at a different dose. The Medication Sketch Artist shows promise as a tool to determine unknown medications. It could play an important role in reducing medication errors.