Cancer Care Ontario's computerized physician order entry system: a province-wide patient safety innovation.

More than one-third of all women and men in Canada will develop cancer during their lifetimes. Cancer patients typically require complex chemotherapy regimens, specific to their type and stage of disease, to slow or stop cancer cells from growing, multiplying, or spreading to other parts of the body. Despite the complexity of managing medication regimens for cancer patients and the associated risks to patient safety, current medical oncology practice throughout most of Canada is still to use paper-based tools, policies and procedures. To increase patient safety by reducing prescription errors and to offer clinical decision support to medical oncologists across the province, Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) developed and implemented Canada's first, cancer-specific computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system. This e-health innovation is currently in use in 11 cancer centres, and represents the largest ambulatory oncology CPOE implementation in Canada, with a 100% implementation success rate, and greater than 90% physician adoption. This paper describes the critical success factors in the design and implementation of CCO's CPOE system, including Web-based training and ease of administration to maximize physician adoption, incorporating point-of-care access to clinical practice guidelines into the tool, and the use of CPOE data to monitor and increase access to anti-cancer drugs and patient safety.