Clinical Usefulness of Drug-Disease Interaction Alerts from a Clinical Decision Support System, MedGuard, for Patient Safety: A Single Center Study

Clinical decision support systems have been widely used in healthcare, yet few studies have concurrently measured the clinical effectiveness of CDSSs, and the appropriateness of alerts with physicians' response to alerts. We conducted a retrospective analysis of prescriptions caused disease-medication related alerts. Medication orders for outpatients' prescriptions, all aged group were included in this study. All the prescriptions were reviewed, and medication orders compared with a widely used medication reference (UpToDate) and other standard guidelines. We reviewed 1,409 CDS alerts (2.67% alert rate) on 52,654 prescriptions ordered during the study period. 545 (38.70%) of alerts were overridden. Override appropriateness was 2.20% overall. However, the rate of alert acceptance was higher, ranging from 11.11 to 92.86%. The MedGuard system had a lower overridden rate than other systems reported in previous studies. The acceptance rate of alerts by physicians was high. Moreover, false-positive rate was low. The MedGuard system has the potential to reduce alert fatigue and to minimize the risk of patient harm.