11 February 2019 - - US-based drug and medical device knowledge provider FDB (First Databank, Inc.) have released targeted medication decision support that provides clinicians with more meaningful guidance at the most appropriate time in the clinical workflow, the company said.

FDB's Targeted Medication Warnings leverage patient-specific, contextual clinical information within the EHR to identify only the patients that manifest the prescribing risk, so that resulting clinical guidance is more meaningful and actionable.

At present, five hospital systems have integrated FDB's Targeted Medication Warnings.

Medication decision support within healthcare IT systems has been limited due to the lack of availability of broader patient information, so knowledge bases and IT systems only considered the drug with limited clinical context.

Integrating patient record information presents broader possibilities to be more specific and targeted and to take a "patient first" approach.

The benefits are significant because as clinical decision support incorporates more patient context, such as lab values or clinical risk scores, it becomes more meaningful and therefore more likely to be acted upon.

This new, more targeted approach is designed to improve the positive predictive value of alerts and improve clinician efficiency over current CDS methods.

The new targeted medication decision support from FDB focuses on high-risk clinical scenarios such as hyperkalemia, QT prolongation, opioid use, pharmacogenomics, and others.

Patient-specific information, such as lab values and clinical risk assessments, are pulled into the guidance to provide actionable information at the right time in the workflow.

Traditional medication alerts that do not apply will be demoted when Targeted Medication Warnings are implemented in the EHR, so that end users are trading broader alerts for those that are more targeted.

Currently available for Epic health system customers, FDB Targeted Medication Warnings can also integrate with other technology solution providers.

FDB is the provider of drug and medical device knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions.

With thousands of customers worldwide, FDB enables our information system developer partners to deliver valuable, useful, and differentiated solutions.

The Hearst Health network includes FDB (First Databank), Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase, MedHOK and Hearst Health Ventures.

Hearst also holds a minority interest in the precision medicine and oncology analytics company M2Gen.

Each year in the US, care guidance from Hearst Health reaches 85% of discharged patients, 205m insured individuals, 77 m home health visits and 3.2bn dispensed prescriptions.