Interactive voice response systems for medication identification requests: poison or cure?

摘要

Interactive voice response systems (IVR) have traditionally been used by banking and credit card industries to rapidly process information requests for their customers. Today IVR technology is being used in clinical medicine to randomize patients in clinical studies, to collect patient data, and to follow-up on recently discharged patients. Use of IVR systems by poison centers is relatively new. This commentary explores the advantages and disadvantages of applying IVR technology to the medication identification requests in poison centers.