Why won’t medication management be easier in the future, and what can you do about it?

“Let’s face it: hospital medication management is kind of scary. And expensive. Too many things are still done by hand. Yes, we have electronic prescribing and decision-support systems. Unfortunately, they still frustrate users more often than not,” said Better Meds Product Director Roko Malkoč in his short talk at the Rewired conference. 

See the full talk in a short 5-minute video:

A lot of things will get easier once the transfer of information is improved. In the UK, NHS Digital is making important progress in this direction. “However, medication management won’t necessarily be easier in the future,” warned Roko Malkoč. The reason, he mentioned, is the increasing number of tech solutions in the clinical setting. “There are AI-driven support systems, digital therapeutics, and other arising digital health tools catering to the emerging idea of personalised medicine. The promises of personalised and precision medicine are that patient safety and outcomes will improve. That all sounds great, but we all know that this can only happen under one condition: you have to introduce these new tools to the clinical staff in the right way, change the culture, and explain why these systems are valuable, trustworthy, and a vital part of a brighter future,” emphasized Malkoč. 

Data gathered seamlessly enables hospitals to do a lot of analysis, which is something hospital managers know they need. This enables them to figure out where their clinicians struggle, and how they can help to consequently prevent errors. Better Meds is currently present in six acute NHS Trusts and three mental health trusts. 

At Better, we are committed to following the recommendations and requirements set by the NHSX to drive interoperability. Last year, we rolled out our Pharmacy integration API for our Better Meds electronic prescribing and medication management system.

We are proud to announce two critical integrations in our next update of Better Meds: 

1. The new version of the system will include everything necessary to connect to the Electronic Prescription Service (EPS). This will allow prescribers in integrated, urgent care settings to send electronic prescriptions to the community.
   
2. Thanks to our integration with GP Connect, patient medication history from the primary level will be directly available to hospital prescribers in the Better Meds EPMA system.

We already presented these integrations at last year’s INTEROPen hackathon, and the outcome brought us victory. That would not have been possible without broad collaboration with other vendors and IT providers.