Monitoring for adverse drug events of high-risk medications with a computerized clinical decision support system: a prospective cohort study

Monitoring is recommended to prevent severe adverse drug events, but such examinations are often missed. To increase the number of monitoring that should be ordered for high-risk medications, we introduced a clinical decision support system (CDSS) that alerts and orders the monitoring for high-risk medications in an outpatient setting. We conducted a 2-year prospective cohort study at a tertiary care teaching hospital before (phase 1) and after (phase 2) the activation of a CDSS. The CDSS automatically provided alerts for liver function tests for vildagliptin, thyroid function tests for immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) and multikinase inhibitors (MKIs), and a slit-lamp examination of the eyes for oral amiodarone when outpatients were prescribed the medications but not examined for a fixed period. The order of laboratory tests automatically appeared if alert was accepted. The alerts were hidden and did not appear on the display before activation of the CDSS. The outcomes were the number of prescriptions with alerts and examinations. During the study period, 330 patients in phase 1 and 307 patients in phase 2 were prescribed vildagliptin, 20 patients in phase 1 and 19 patients in phase 2 were prescribed ICIs or MKIs, and 72 patients in phase 1 and 66 patients in phase 2 were prescribed oral amiodarone. The baseline characteristics were similar between the phases. In patients prescribed vildagliptin, the proportion of alerts decreased significantly (38% vs 27%, P < 0.0001), and the proportion of examinations increased significantly (0.9% vs 4.0%, P < 0.0001) after activation of the CDSS. In patients prescribed ICIs or MKIs, the proportion of alerts decreased significantly (43% vs 11%, P < 0.0001), and the proportion of examinations increased numerically, but not significantly (2.6% vs 7.0%, P = 0.13). In patients prescribed oral amiodarone, the proportion of alerts decreased (86% vs 81%, P = 0.055), and the proportion of examinations increased (2.2% and 3.0%, P = 0.47); neither was significant. The CDSS has potential to increase the monitoring for high-risk medications. Our study also highlighted the limited acceptance rate of monitoring by CDSS. Further studies are needed to explore the generalizability to other medications and the cause of the limited acceptance rates among physicians.