Volume 10, Issue 2
Page 9
Drug Burden Index Pilot Project:
Go Live: 24th March 2021
Royal North Shore Hospital’s (RNSH) Aged Care and General Medicine service has been selected to pilot a new enhancement of the NSW Health eMR which supports reduction of polypharmacy in older patients, called Drug Burden Index (DBI). The eMR DBI is a clinical risk assessment tool to measure the functional burden of an older person’s medications developed by Professor Sarah Hilmer’s research team. It is a pharmacological measure of a person’s total exposure to medications with anticholinergic and sedative effects. Cumulative effects of these medicines contribute to falls, frailty and cognitive impairment in older people. Old age and polypharmacy are major risk factors for adverse drug events and can lead to poorer health outcomes for older inpatients. Reducing inappropriate polypharmacy for older inpatients should reduce adverse events, including falls and cognitive impairment, and improve the quality of life in older people. Clinicians can weigh up the risk of this exposure against any potential benefit for the patient Drug Burden Index (DBI) is a new functionality in the Cerner Electronic Medical Record (eMR) which supports clinicians (e.g. doctors, pharmacists, nurses) in considering DBI when performing medication reviews for older inpatients in hospital.
The DBI project will pilot and evaluate the new DBI solution to ensure it further supports clinicians in providing safe and high-quality patient care and enable availability for wider use across NSW.
The pilot will run for 90 days only within the Aged Care & General Medicine Inpatient Services ONLY.
At the time of go-live, all other clinicians across Northern Sydney may be able to see aspects of the new features in the eMR, however, will not be using it as part of this pilot. Training has been targeted to the key stakeholders in two clinical areas Aged Care and General Medicine within RNSH utilising existing departmental/ educational sessions to the following groups:
RNS CNEs RNS JMOs
General Medicine Departmental Meeting
Aged Care Departmental Meeting
For more information contact:
Zoe Howard, Change Manager, eMeds Enhancements: zoe.howard@health.nsw.gov.au or visit our Intranet Site Here
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