BMJ Quality & Safety has peer reviewed and published a new study on Dosium’s Touchdose, which shows that use of the solution reduces hospital prescribing errors by 84% compared with standard clinical practice. [1] A health economics evaluation tied to the study, soon to be published, calculates that the solution could save millions of pounds per year if rolled out across NHS secondary care alone.

This is the first study of a system built by UK clinicians that has shown significant promise to shift the needle on prescribing safety.

Medication errors are the leading cause of preventable harm in healthcare, and persist despite the proliferation of clinical decision support systems. The real-world simulation study was led by researchers from Imperial College London and conducted at a large London NHS trust. It observed prescribers making 240 simulated medication orders designed to reflect real-world scenarios, and compared the incidence and types of erroneous medication orders, time to prescribe, and workload with and without the Touchdose intervention.

Use of the tool was also associated with an almost 20% reduction in the time it took to prescribe. 96% of users felt Touchdose reduced their workload around prescribing. [1]

Touchdose is an indication-based prescribing tool, developed at London’s Helix Centre and already improving prescribing safety for half a million children in London. The solution has a unique, live integration with the BNF and automates precise dosing recommendations based on individual patient factors.

“Despite the NHS investing hundreds of millions of pounds in electronic prescribing and clinical decision support systems, these technologies have not significantly impacted patient safety.

Touchdose is the only software system that can tell prescribing clinicians the correct dose for their individual patients, informed live from BNF and across all conditions. We’d love to see it spread nationally, improving safety for every single patient that is prescribed medicine in the NHS.”

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Dr Nicholas Appelbaum

Co-Founder, Dosium

Read the full study in BMJ Quality & Safety, or contact us to discuss bringing Dosium to your organisation.