Medications Database

OpenEMR currently uses publicly accessible medication databases. The problem is the owners of these databases come and go. Sometimes the URL is moved, sometimes the company withdraws access, sometimes the company is bought or just goes out of business.

If we develop our own, this problem goes away. An alternative would be to get involved with an outside company for prescribing and interfacing with openemr. In the past Sandra Gutierrez has contacted epocrates.com and iscribe.com. Neither could acomodate openemr, plus the former is too slow and does no electronic prescribing. the latter could not interface with other programs. However maybe in the future caremark, cvs or blue cross blue shield would be more willing to get together and discuss it. Sandra Gutierrez uses iscribe for electronic prescribing. their interface and database is pretty solid and easy to use. Currently she has to document separately in openemer or print the script and scan it into the system.

Qualifications:

Physicians
Pharmacists
Interest in development of a rational formulary

Objectives:

Internalize the medication database
File all drugs by generic name
Add common brand names for the known OpenEMR language translations
maintain the drug:drug interaction database

Format:

generic name = xl('Brand USA')

This usage would take advantage of the already existing multi-language capabilities in OpenEMR so the the brand names that vary from one country to the next could be inserted.

The generic name is generally the only constant and is legally mandated in some countries (China ofr instance). For the rest of us it an excellent practice. Using the generic name makes drug:drug interaction checking easier.