Modeling a decision support system to prevent adverse drug events

Abstract

Adverse drug events are known to be a major health problem worldwide. Decision support systems (DSSs) that assist drug ordering have demonstrated to be a powerful tool to prevent prescription errors and adverse drug events. On the other hand, some issues related to the development, implementation, configuration and evaluation of these DDSs still need further research. The objective of this project was the development of a DSS prototype that helps with the prevention of adverse drug events by detecting drug-drug interactions in drug orders. The structure of the system tries to solve some of the problems described by the literature, such as integration with hospital information systems, adaptability to local needs, and knowledge base maintenance. The proposed model has been shown to be an effective method for representing drug-drug interactions.