Visualization of patient prescription history data in emergency care.

Interpreting patient's medication history from long textual data can be unwieldy especially in emergency care. We developed a real-time software application that converts one-year-long patient prescription history data into a visually appealing and information-rich timeline chart. The chart can be digested by healthcare providers quickly; hence, it could be an invaluable clinical tool when the rapid response time is crucial as in stroke or severe trauma cases. Furthermore, the visual clarity of the displayed information may help providers minimize medication errors. The tool has been deployed at the emergency department of a trauma center. Due to its popularity, we developed another version of this tool. It provides more granular drug dispensation information, which clinical pharmacists find very useful in their routine medication-reconciliation efforts.