Healthcare E-Prescriptions Stunted By Software Vendors

Electronic prescription could grow right across the Australian healthcare market but the software vendors need to improve their offerings if e-prescription is going to take off, according to new Ovum research.E-prescription systems integrate healthcare patients’ prescriptions and the dispensing of medicine in an IT solution that cuts the costs and inaccuracies of the paper system, also giving the perks of patient medicinal history and reducing potential fraud through the streamlined, online system.

The report found that while these types of e-prescription systems slowly grow in the European healthcare sector, the Australian healthcare industry sees current software offerings as being not sophisticated enough to integrate with existing IT systems.

A paper recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that e-prescriptions in the US were just as prone to errors as paper prescriptions, though most of these errors involved omitted information and could be eliminated via upgrades to current software.

While the National Broadband Network may set a physical platform for electronic healthcare solutions across the nation, Ovum is pointing at the software in place as the major inhibitor for e-prescriptions.

“High upfront costs and patient confidentiality fears are two of the reasons for this,” said Andrew Brosnan, author of the Ovum report.

“But a major cause of resistance to the adoption is a pervasive sense that the IT solutions currently available have not as yet achieved the level of sophistication that will be required to mesh seamlessly with other IT progammes and systems.

“This is of great concern to prescribers.”

90 per cent of Australian physicians use some form of e-prescription currently, after the solutions began cropping up in the ’90s, though data quality is a major concern for the future of e-prescriptions as Australia lacks standards here.

There have also been issues on the physicians’ end, with tricky interfaces and difficulties in adopting the system making paper prescriptions seem all the more appealing.

Ovum suggests that software vendors in the prescription sector adhere to the National e-Health Transition Authority’s set standards for e-health interoperability.