Recommendations for selecting drug-drug interactions for clinical decision support

To recommend principles for including drug-drug interactions (DDIs) in clinical decision support

Recommendations for selecting drug–drug interactions for clinical decision support

PURPOSE: To recommend principles for including drug-drug interactions (DDIs) in clinical decision support. METHODS: A conference series was conducted to improve clinical decision support (CDS) for DDIs. The Content Workgroup met monthly by webinar from January 2013 to February 2014, with two in-person meetings to reach consensus. The workgroup consisted of 20 experts in pharmacology, drug information, and CDS from academia, government agencies, health information (IT) vendors, and healthcare organizations. Workgroup members addressed four key questions: (1) What process should be used to develop and maintain a standard set of DDIs?; (2) What information should be included in a knowledgebase of standard DDIs?; (3) Can/should a list of contraindicated drug pairs be established?; and (4) How can DDI alerts be more intelligently filtered? RESULTS: To develop and maintain a standard set of DDIs for CDS in the United States, we recommend a transparent, systematic, and evidence-driven process with graded recommendations by a consensus panel of experts and oversight by a national organization. We outline key DDI information needed to help guide clinician decision-making. We recommend judicious classification of DDIs as contraindicated, as only a small set of drug combinations are truly contraindicated. Finally, we recommend more research to identify methods to safely reduce repetitive and less relevant alerts. CONCLUSION: A systematic ongoing process is necessary to select DDIs for alerting clinicians. We anticipate that our recommendations can lead to consistent and clinically relevant content for interruptive DDIs, and thus reduce alert fatigue and improve patient safety