JAC, the UK's leading medicine management systems specialist, has won a contract with Southampton University Hospitals NHS Trust (SUHT) to undertake a trust-wide roll out of its Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) system.
The Trust provides services to some 1.3 million people living in Southampton and South Hampshire, as well as specialist services such as neurosciences, cardiac treatment and children's intensive care to more than 3 million people in central southern England and the Channel Islands.
The new EPMA system will assist in the reduction of drug transcription, prescribing and administration errors, as well as providing the Trust with an effective method to facilitate auditing across the organisation. It will also play a key role in ensuring the safety of paediatric prescribing by supporting clinicians in the calculation of individual doses for each child.
Martin Stephens, Associate Medical Director for Clinical Effectiveness & Medicines Management and Chair of the e-Prescribing Project Group said: "The Trust is committed to improving the safety of prescribing and we see EPMA as a reliable and effective method in helping us achieve this objective. The system will help staff who are prescribing, administering and dispensing medicines and ensure access to the medicines record without reliance on the paper trail."
The solution will be rolled out across both inpatient and outpatient wards, functioning as the Trust's e-prescribing system. SUHT selected JAC's e-prescribing solution for its rich functionality and ability to meet its specific requirements for trust-wide deployment.
The Trust has already used JAC's Pharmacy Stock Control system for several years, and will integrate it fully with the EPMA solution to enable closer end-to-end medicines management, further reducing administrative overheads.
In addition to enhancing compliance and reducing errors, e-prescribing can deliver savings in drug costs through closer management of prescriptions, and can cut the time taken to discharge patients by reducing waiting times for take-out medication, helping to free up beds. It also gives comprehensive audit trails for prescribing and medicines administration, improving clinical governance.
The system also incorporates First DataBank Europe's Multilex Drug Data File, which provides clinical users with patient-specific clinical decision support.
About JAC
JAC is the UK's leading medicine management systems specialist, with the largest installed base of Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration systems in UK hospitals. These systems improve patient safety by reducing prescribing and administration mistakes that could result in medication errors and adverse drug events.
EPMA also facilitates wider improvements in clinical practice, including: reductions in paperwork and transcriptions; improved audit trails for medication; performance monitoring and intelligence; reporting greater consistency and continuity of care between primary and secondary care settings; and more effective communication between hospital departments and pharmacies. The system incorporates the UK's leading Clinical drug database (FirstDatabank Multilex), to support safe and effective electronic prescribing through its clinical checking, reducing the risk of medication errors and increasing patient safety.