Cost-related information to be provided by computerised drug-prescription systems to promote cost-effective prescribing.

Drug prescriptions are a source of steadily increasing healthcare expenditure in most developed countries. As the use of Computerised Drug Prescription Systems (CDPS) increase both in hospital and community-care settings, the potential of such systems to promote cost-effective prescribing and help contain prescription costs should be considered. This article describes the cost-related information that could be provided by a CDPS, namely decision-support information to be provided on-line during the prescription entry, and retrospective information made available by processing stored prescription records. The review also describes design and specification requirements for building a cost-information module that can be used in various health-delivery systems. These are: (i) adequate and well-organised data; (ii) pertinent background knowledge of the domain; and (iii) algorithms that allow adaptation to site-specific features. The propositions expounded in this article result from a part of the work performed during the Optimisation of Drug Prescription using Advanced Informatics (OPADE) European project.