Medication safety through e-health technology: can we close the gaps?

摘要

E-health technology is promoted as one of the most promising steps towards safer drug treatment. E-health solutions offer a platform for standardization and information exchange across institutions and interfaces of care, facilitate in-process controls and double checking, help to (re)structure processes and support the health care professionals during their work. Since the late 1990s, e-health solutions for medication safety have evolved rapidly. However, a considerable fraction of evidence for these e-health solutions was gathered in only few sites in the US [1] that performed accompanying research. In Europe, research sites with a particular emphasis on medication safety are widely scattered. Hence, research collaborations across Europe may enhance knowl-edgeexchange,bundleresourcesandoffertheopportunity to multiply the impact of a single site. One such research co-operation was established in 2010 with a particular emphasis on medication safety and health-IT. Currently over 20 researchers from 15 institutions throughout Germany, Switzerland,and Austria exchange ideas in semiannual meetings and organize research collaborations and scientific exchange (http://iig.umit.at/amts). The current members ofthegroup have varying backgrounds including occupational science, bioinformatics, medical informatics, mechanical engineering, pharmacy and medicine. This colorful mix of expertise inspires joint collaborations to identify and tackle theopen gaps in research on medication safety and e-health technology while the group is open for new members and interested research partners. This supplement is intended to give an overview on the groups' research focus and current'hottopics'.Moreover, we present one strategy to foster and coordinate nation-wide research projects by developing and implementing a research memorandum that enables a focused funding of related research projects (Aly et ah, page 1).