Reducing Medication Errors
Meducation (www.meducation.com) is a new, patent-pending software solution developed by Polyglot Systems, Inc. through funding by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities (R44 MD001212). Meducation enables physicians, nurses, and pharmacists to provide medication instructions to limited English-proficient patients in their preferred language. This is accomplished through print, voice, and on-screen animations, and results in simple, easy-to-understand medication usage instructions in virtually any languages.
Problem - In the U.S. today, there are about 60,000 retail pharmacies serving 300 million people - an estimated 24 million of which speak limited or no English. On average each pharmacy serves 5,000 people - over 400 of which have difficulty understanding English. In 2006, 3.7 billion prescriptions were filled. In some stores, a pharmacist has as little as two minutes to fill each prescription and does not have adequate time to counsel patients, let alone communicate with those who do not speak English. Pharmacies are frequently criticized by immigrant and consumer advocacy groups for failing to help non or limited English-speaking persons with their medications. The inability of many patients to understand usage instructions is undoubtedly a factor in the 1.5 million adverse drug events and 98,000 resulting deaths that occur each year. |
Solution - Meducation allows physicians, nurses, and pharmacists to communicate with patients in one of the first six languages - Spanish, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, Arabic, and English. Written language, voiced explanations, and visual animations facilitate the dissemination of easy-to-understand prescription information to persons not able to understand English. Over 300 top medications are covered, representing about 95% of prescriptions dispensed by U.S. pharmacies. The patient can view a medication usage demonstration at the doctor's office or pharmacy and leave with clear and simple printed instructions for her prescriptions in her preferred language. She can also view the instructions from a home computer to reinforce the learning.
Benefits - Meducation helps both healthcare professionals and patients in a variety of ways:
> for all healthcare professionals, Meducation improves quality of service to patients and decreases the potential for patient error and prescription misuse. For pharmacists, it increases efficiency and ability to handle other aspects of the job. It may enable a pharmacy to attract new customers. It also helps the pharmacy comply with Federal and state regulations which require providing linguistic assistance for limited English-proficient persons.
> for the patient, Meducation provides increased comfort and satisfaction with the pharmacy's services, improved medical care through better communication with the healthcare professionals, better understanding of prescription usage instructions, and the potential for greater prescription usage compliance.
We are currently enrolling pharmacy sites to participate in an early adopter program. If you are interested in being involved, please contact Dr. Charles Lee at lee@pgsi.com.
Sample multilingual demonstrations coming soon to this site!
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