Authors (including presenting author) :
Wong CL(1), Bei HYB(2), Li YS(1), Leung YM(2), Cheng W(2), Cheng FWT(2)(3), Poon HM(1), Chan GCF(3)
Affiliation :
(1) Pharmacy Department, Hong Kong Children’s Hospital (2) Information Technology Department, Hong Kong Children’s Hospital (3) Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, Hong Kong Children’s Hospital
Introduction :
Hong Kong Children’s Hospital (HKCH) as the only children oncology center in Hong Kong handles a variety of haematology and oncology paediatric patients, which involve diversify chemotherapy protocols. Electronic chemotherapy prescriptions (chemo forms in short) were developed in excel format in HKCH to minimize calculation error of chemotherapy. There are over 500 chemo forms available. As the chemotherapy protocols and roadmaps are complicated with different groups and branches selection, retrieving the correct form is important. The existing manual workflow may not be able to cope with the increasing workload and personalized treatment. Hence development of a web-based chemotherapy workflow management system would be beneficial in scheduling individual chemotherapy, enhancing prescribing correctness by guiding next electronic chemo form, and retrieval of previous chemo forms under a patient profile.
Objectives :
To enhance medication safety through development of a web-based and patient-based electronic chemo form workflow management system, which allows retrieval of correct chemo forms (available in excel) for prescribing, guide the scheduling of chemotherapy and archive previous chemo forms under a patient profile.
Methodology :
A web-based chemo form system was developed in collaboration with doctors, pharmacy and Information Technology (I.T.) department of HKCH for patient-based chemotherapy prescribing. The system could facilitate selection of correct chemo forms. Doctor could retrieve relevant chemo forms according to treatment roadmap for a specific patient after inputting information on patient’s disease, treatment protocol and risk category. Afterwards, the upcoming chemotherapy schedule and the corresponding chemo forms will be shown and available for prescribing.
Moreover, a web-based archive of previous chemo forms will be available as per searching under a patient profile, for patient history referencing and facilitate long-term data analysis.
The web-based platform also allows change in chemo protocol in case of clinical need.
Result & Outcome :
The web-based platform would facilitate doctor to select the correct chemo form based on patient disease status, guide the correct scheduling of next chemotherapy according to roadmap, and help to archive the previous chemo forms for referencing. This patient-based chemotherapy workflow management system can enhance medication safety and hence preventing error in prescribing these high risk medications.