Delivering safe and effective medication management technology now and for the future

This program aims to deliver the new evidence urgently needed to optimise electronic medication management (eMM) systems and ensure their effective integration into dynamic clinical workflows to advance medication safety and appropriateness in hospitals, now and into the future. Modern health care systems are facing unprecedented pressures – as rising costs, ageing populations, and increasingly complex care coincide. Medication errors are a major cause of preventable harm and death, costing some $42B globally and $1.3B in Australia each year. Although exceptional opportunities are emerging to harness new technologies – driving massive investments in clinical digital systems - their potential to ameliorate the healthcare systems stresses depends on their design, effectiveness and integration into clinical work. Building on my team’s pioneering work in health informatics – and utilising our globally-recognised methodologies – I aim to generate the new knowledge essential to realising the full potential of eMM systems and to inform the optimisation of comparable clinical IT systems and tools. This requires an important conceptual leap; the simultaneous consideration of both current and future scenarios. While the optimisation of today’s eMM systems is critical, so too is an understanding that electronic systems are, in themselves, dynamic new knowledge generators. By harnessing their datasets, well designed and integrated eMM systems promise to advance medication management and safety and deliver a stream of new insights. As multi-billion-dollar digital systems transform care delivery, the paucity of evidence to guide eMM system design and integration, and to leverage their data, is putting investments and patients at risk. The proposed deep investigation of the many variables at the interface between new technologies and the professionals who use them will deliver systems which support clinicians’ work and substantially improve health services delivery and outcomes.