Enhancing Alerts with Lab Data: Surprise Findings
In medication safety screening, alert fatigue occurs when the signal:noise ratio is so low that clinicians develop a habit of ignoring alerts, thereby potentially missing important alerts when they occur. One idea for reducing alert fatigue is to display relevant and recent lab results alongside the alert, thereby allowing physicians to make a more informed decision of the risk of a particular drug-drug interaction in a given patient. For example, if a drug-drug interaction may cause an increase in serum potassium (hyperkalemia), and if a patient’s serum potassium is already on the high side of normal, a physician may determine that it’s too risky to continue with the prescribed drug combination in this particular patient. Read further >
