Analysis and Redesign of a Knowledge Database for a Drug-Drug Interactions Alert System

LUNA, DANIEL R.; OTERO, VICTORIA.; CANOSA, DANIELA; MONTENEGRO, SERGIO; OTERO, PAULA; GONZÁLEZ, B. DE QUIRÓS F.

Studies in health technology and informatics

IOS Press

Año: 2007

0926-9630

Physicians tend to ignore drug-drug interactions alerts,this is due to the large amount of irrelevant interactionsdisplayed and the interface in which these alerts areshown. The high rate of clinically inadequate alerts produce?alerts fatigue?. This high number of incorrectalerts predisposes physicians to underestimate the electronicprescription systems as useful tools in their practice.We decided to analyze and redesign our drug-drug interactionsalerting system knowledge database. In order to doso, we cleaned our knowledge database according to theclinical significance of drug-drug interactions. New druginteractions taxonomy was created in four levels based onclinical significance and the recommendations given ineach single monograph of interaction. We proceeded torecategorize the alerts as Active, which present themselvesto the physician interrupting the prescribing process, orPassive, which allow physicians to accept the recommendations,and adopt some action in order of minimizing theinteraction risks.