Prescription of amiodarone through a computerized template that includes both decision support and executive functions improves the monitoring for toxicities.

The antiarrhythmic drug amiodarone causes severe side effects that warrant active monitoring. In a given patient, monitoring for amiodarone toxicities involves checking past results of five laboratory/imaging tests and reordering four of these tests every 6 to 12 month, a process that is both complex and time-consuming. We hypothesized that a software tool that automated the retrieval and ordering of these tests in a context-sensitive manner would improve the completeness of surveillance for drug toxicities.