West Middlesex University Hospital has gone live with Dosium’s clinical decision support technology, Touchdose, which has been shown to reduce prescribing errors by an average of 83%. [1] It follows go-live at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital last month, and St Mary’s Hospital last summer, and marks the completion of the final stage of rollout across the entire West London Children’s Healthcare (WLCH) partnership, which cares for 150,000 children every year across Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

West Middlesex University Hospital

Clinicians will have access to Touchdose from this week, and are being encouraged to use it for all paediatric prescriptions. The tool automatically calculates the right dosage of drugs for any given patient, taking information from the EHR and local guidelines, and using a live integration with the British National Formulary for Children (BNFC).

Clinicians using Touchdose for paediatric prescribing have been shown to be an average of 83% less likely to make a prescribing error than those not using the tool, with rates dropping from 7.1% to 1.2% when used at St Mary’s Hospital. [1]

Of the 237 million medication errors every year in England, about a third of them (66 million) are ‘clinically significant’, meaning they cause harm or require some kind of further intervention. [2] Prescribing errors are cited as a contributing factor in upwards of 1,700 deaths in the NHS every year, and children are particularly vulnerable: because of their smaller size, margins for error are slim and seemingly small mistakes can have a big impact.

“I have been impressed with the instant impact it has had in other parts of the trust, and use it in my own work, too,” Professor Maconochie added.

“West London Children’s Healthcare has taken an important step in improving prescribing safety.

This kind of proactive, joined-up approach will help reduce errors and avoid harm before it happens.”

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Nicholas Appelbaum

CEO and Co-Founder, Dosium

“But it’s also about improving consistency. From today, children treated across all WLCH sites will benefit from the same high standard of care, wherever they are seen,” said Nicholas. “It’s been a privilege to work with the team at WLCH. Their clear focus on patient safety and collaboration across organisations has made this possible.”