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New technology from the Pharm2Pharm program helps pharmacists manage high-risk patient medications.

Healthcare providers throughout Hawaiʻi are using technology from a project led by the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo that helps pharmacists manage high-risk patients’ medications across a variety of settings.

The technology was first used in the federally funded $14.3 million Pharm2Pharm program, operated from the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy. Pharm2Pharm established a set of tools that were implemented through the Hawaiʻi Health Information Exchange (HHIE) system to communicate important clinical information to support patient care.

“Through the health information technology we used for the Pharm2Pharm program, we were able to support pharmacists shifting from their traditional role of dispensing drugs into becoming a part of the patient care team. We believe this represents a unique integration of prescription medication information into an HIE,” said Francis Chan, HHIE’s interim executive director.

Researchers looked at pharmacists providing services for the Pharm2Pharm model in the state of Hawaiʻi, hospital pharmacists and community pharmacists.

They determined priorities that could be addressed through health information technology tools including:

  • More efficient and secure ways to transmit care transition documents
  • Reliable access to outpatient translators
  • More efficient ways to identify outpatient medications for medication reconciliation
  • More efficient access to clinical information
  • A system to document and communicate reconciled medication list and drug therapy problems
  • A system to manage the population of patients enrolled

Technology tools that addressed those priorities, such as direct secure messaging, virtual translators and a prescription fill history query system, were implemented. The pharmacists in the study made the transition from paper and faxes to online technologies.

For full story read the UH Hilo news release.

—By Alyson Kakugawa-Leong

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