I got hold of this summary in some information that my boss was presenting to shareholders, and I got permission to post it generally, since this part is entirely public anyway.

When you go to hospital, you get drugs prescribed. Generally, the prescription is done by a busy doctor, scribbling in crabbed dog-Latin on a cramped medical chart. Then, a nurse with (typically) fifty-year-old eyes, often working in low light conditions, attempts to interpret the scribble and give you the right drug. Hijinks ensue!

From Wilson, R.M., et al., The Quality in Australian Health Care Study. Med J Aust, 1995. 163(9): p. 458-71:

Mistakes in hospital kill 18,000 Australians each year - that's 50 patients a day. They take up 8% of all hospital beds and cost $1.2 billion per year. Around 20% of Adverse Events are due to medication mistakes (we call these ADEs, or Adverse Drug Events).

From Prof Bill Runciman, President, Australian Patient Safety Foundation:

Somewhere between 2000 and 5000 patients die in Australia every year because of Medication related ADEs. Approximately 1% of all hospital beds are occupied by patients that are in hospital because of a Medication Mistake. ADE Costs Australian hospitals at least 100 million dollars per year.

From a US Veterans Affairs study:

483 clinically significant Medication Mistakes per 100 admissions
25% of all hospitalizations had at least one Medication Mistake.
9% of all Medication Mistakes resulted in serious harm.
22% generate a need for additional monitoring or intervention

I might not like JavaScript or Microsoft Internet Explorer, and I sometimes wish our air conditioner could be nuked from orbit for the good of all humanity... but I'm part of the effort to eradicate the butchery of patients by completely avoidable medical mistakes, and I'm bloody pleased about that.

Sure beats coding yet another government website...


(Oh, and there's a bit in one of the links about how even electronic prescribing isn't always a perfect solution, because it can still allow ambiguous instructions to be given, such as "Use once a week for two weeks for two weeks twice a week for a week once a week". Well, our product already deals with exactly that situation with complete clarity, and I was instrumental in designing a new feature that increases this power without egregious increases in difficulty. So I think we come pretty close to being the ideal solution. If you're a state health minister or the administrator of a hospital, you should give us a whirl!)