Using Healthcare IC Cards to manage the drug doses of chronic disease patients.

In Taiwan's medical system, the Healthcare IC Card is used as form of secure data storage. This research applies the Healthcare IC Card to record the chronic disease patient's recent drug doses, diagnoses and prescriptions. With the Hospital Information System, this research combines the diagnosis records stored in the Healthcare IC Card to establish a platform which could simulate the procedures of a doctor in examining a patient and checking the circumstances of the patient's repetitive drug doses and drugs interactions. The experiment is based on a data log of about 22,000 items of drug prescribed to 43 diabetes patients and about 88,200 items to 192 high blood pressure patients. The results show that the proposed approach would have reduced the waste of medical resources, strengthened Taiwan's medical system and increased the public's health.