Configuration Systems Applied to the Healthcare Sector for an Enhanced Prescription Process

The implementation of enhanced clinical decision support systems promises a significant improvement in healthcare quality. Research, encompassing both literature review and health professionals’ assessments, has underpinned the urgency of an improved prescription process. A configuration system could support a novel proactive, standardized, and efficient decision-making process of the physician during the drugs prescription process and, consequently, reduce the associated mortality, morbidity, and health cost rates of medication errors.

The practicality of using configurators to support the drugs’ prescription to prevent adverse drug events is evaluated through a feasibility study and validated by successfully developing a configurator prototype for a Danish hospital department. The medicines’ attributes and patient conditions are mapped through an adapted version of the so-called product variant master and detailed on the named class-responsibility-collaboration cards, generally used for modeling mechanical products.