First Databank Releases Dosing Customization Capability in FDB AlertSpace® Alert Management Solution

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--First Databank (FDB), the leading provider of clinical drug knowledge that improves medication-related decisions and patient outcomes, today announced that medication dosing content is now available for customization in its alert management solution, FDB AlertSpace. The addition of this drug domain allows users to customize dose checking information, including dosing ranges, frequencies, units of measure and more. FDB drug knowledge experts will be demonstrating AlertSpace and all FDB medication decision support solutions at the HIMSS13 Conference, March 3 – 7, in New Orleans, LA in booth number 4241.

“We received tremendous feedback from our customer base that medication dose customization is highly desired functionality due to the fact that errors in medication dosing represent the most common type of medication errors.”

Since its introduction in early 2012, more than 50 health systems, comprised of hundreds of hospitals, as well as numerous long term care facilities have licensed AlertSpace. The ability to customize dose checking information adds to the current functionality including customization of drug-drug and drug-allergy detection, visibility into common customizations and collaboration features.

“We are extremely excited to add dose checking content to a long and growing list of drug knowledge domains now available for customization in AlertSpace,” said Virginia Halsey, product management director-AlertSpace, FDB. “We received tremendous feedback from our customer base that medication dose customization is highly desired functionality due to the fact that errors in medication dosing represent the most common type of medication errors.”

According to researchers¹, manually reducing the number of drug dosing alerts by individually modifying dose rule thresholds has been shown to improve alert acceptance rates. However, this process currently requires a considerable time investment by clinicians to determine which dosing rules should be corrected and to determine the proper alert thresholds. AlertSpace is intended to vastly simplify the process of editing alerts thereby reducing the required time investment.

As part of the AlertSpace demonstration, FDB will be previewing the ONC drug-drug interaction (DDIs) subset, which will soon be incorporated into AlertSpace. This will enable users to identify a subset of high-priority alerts to activate and a set of lower-priority alerts that can be filtered.

Unique alert customization “crowd sourcing” tools also available within AlertSpace allow clinicians to view the most commonly customized alerts made by all AlertSpace users, providing a starting point for focusing customization efforts. Additionally, users are allowed to communicate and collaborate online about customizations within their organization.

About First Databank (FDB)

First Databank (FDB) provides drug knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise medication-related decisions. With thousands of customers worldwide, FDB enables our information system developer partners to deliver a wide range of valuable, useful, and differentiated solutions. As the company that virtually launched the medication decision support category, we offer more than three decades of experience in transforming drug knowledge into actionable, targeted, and effective solutions that improve patient safety and healthcare outcomes. For a complete look at our solutions and services please visit www.fdbhealth.com and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.

¹ Improving Acceptance of Computerized Prescribing Alerts in Ambulatory Care, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Volume 13, Issue 1, January–February 2006, Pages 5-11, Shah, et al.