Description (short summary):
The Patient Safety through Intelligent Procedures in Medication (PSIP) project aimed at developing innovative computer-based applications able to automatically detect risk situations and to deliver healthcare professionals and patients' relevant ad hoc information helping them to prevent Adverse Drug Events (ADE).

The first goal of the PSIP project was to automatically generate knowledge about Adverse Drug Events. As most of the patients' medical information is now available in electronic format and stored in large healthcare repositories, it is possible to exploit these databases to automatically identify Adverse Drug Events.

The project has developed innovative tools to search hospital databases and provide reliable numbers about Adverse Drug Events per country, hospital or medical unit, describing their type, consequences and probable causes. This knowledge about Adverse Drug Events identifies risk situation in each context of care, depending on the patients' characteristics and on the place of care. A web tool, the "Adverse Drug Events scorecards" provides an overview of the frequency of Adverse Drug Events in a hospital (or a medical unit), describing the 56 different Adverse Drug Events identified through a set of 236 rules. 

The second PSIP objective was to deliver to the Healthcare Professionals contextual knowledge that can help them characterise a situation and adapt the treatment to avoid potential Adverse Drug Events. To reach this goal, Computerised Decision Support Systems (CDSS) have been designed using the set of 236 rules. When a physician enters a drug prescription, the data related to the patient are extracted and an instant screening is performed. If a risk situation is detected, alerts are produced and displayed to the physician.

The project adopted a user-centered strategy to the design of prototypes and services to ensure their usability, their adoption by healthcare professionals, and ultimately their efficiency in terms of improving patient safety

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