Linking patient medication data with laboratory information system.

Dozens of new drugs are taken into clinical use each year. Even if the clinicians were able to learn the most important therapeutic effects of the drugs they prescribe, they would still be unable to remember all of their minor effects. After storing patient related medication data on computerized patient records it is possible to build decision support modules which automatically remind of possible drug influences on laboratory tests and cause alarms or alerts of drug interactions. Medication profiles coded using the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical-code (ATC-code) constitutes a valuable part of an Electronic Patient Record (EPR). In this paper, we describe the benefits of our system. By building links to commercially available drug and laboratory databases we can automatically inform clinicians on clinically relevant drug influences on laboratory test results.