New online service could change prescription system

Tufts University Health Services says that they are interested in the technology of electronics prescriptions spearheaded by a major New England health insurer.

According to Catherine Grant of Tufts Health Public Relations, wireless Pocket PC devices will be available to approximately 3,400 Massachusetts physicians over the next several months at a cost of $3 million, which will allow them to file prescriptions online. ZixCorp will also conduct outreach events and educational seminars across Massachusetts promoting e-prescribing.

Tufts Health Plan -- which has no relation to Tufts University -- is New England's largest health plan provider and is working with the Zix Corporation (ZixCorp) to develop e-prescribing software for BlackBerry Color PDA SmartPhones.

The initiative has been in development for several years. "We did a pilot study of the program in 2001 and recently announced plans to deploy the program to all our physicians," Grant said.

The new technology will allow physicians to both refill and create new prescriptions electronically, making traditional handwritten forms unnecessary. Physicians will also have access to a database of patients' prescription histories. Such information can be used to prescribe the most appropriate and cost-effective drug.

Data security is a new concern created by an e-prescription system. In August 2003, ZixCorp told the health industry periodical Health Data Management that e-prescribing will be secure. ZixCorp specializes in secure data transfer in hospitals, and already works with many hospitals across America to ensure that confidential data is kept private.

University Health Services Director Michelle Bowdler said that "if the security issue is handled, the introduction of e-prescriptions could be a wonderful thing to avoid human error."

Margaret Higham, the Medical Director of University Health Services, agreed that the benefits outweigh the risks of the new system, "There is a certain amount of built-in error involved in hand written prescriptions. Through e-prescribing it would be possible to match dosing, and increase safety while automatically flagging drug interactions if the medications are prescribed through the same system."

Hospitals and doctors' offices will most likely be bearing the brunt of e-prescription costs, while the savings will benefit insurance companies. However, it may be a long time before the e-prescription system directly affects students' Tufts health insurance costs, Bowdler said.

Higham predicts that younger medical providers will have far less of a problem adjusting to the new system as opposed to older providers, who are more ingrained in the handwritten method.

Tufts Health Services already uses Palm Pilot technology for instant reference. This system is considered the first step towards a full-fledged e-prescription system.

"[An fully electronic system] is definitely a direction into which we would like to go in the long run. The entire computerizing process is clearly what is going to happen," Higham said.

The pilot study discovered that there were inherent problems in the current handwritten prescription process, mostly owing to illegibility and inaccuracy. The e-prescribing program would eliminate a large percentage of those problems and the process would become more efficient.

"We really want to ramp up and deploy [the software] as quickly as we can because we think the benefits are that great," said Deborah Whitehead, Tufts Health's Assistant Vice President of Pharmacy Services.

In November, New York's Group Health Incorporated gave 5,000 more doctors in New York City the opportunity to e-prescribe using ZixCorp equipment.