IB Woman
Issue No. 39 - February/March 2008
A clinical partnership
by Penelope Herbert
Getting drug therapy right is a constant challenge for hospitals. Bad interaction and poor prescription can have fatal results.
In the quest to achieve best practice in pharmacy services, Kirsten Boyce and Dianne Mahar-Versace of HPS Pharmacies have developed Australia’s first paperless clinical review and reporting system.
Kirsten, an HPS Partner, and Dianne, HPS IT Manager, worked together for almost 12 months to develop clinpod – a central database accessible by hand-held PDA devices that allows clinical pharmacists to enter and retrieve patient clinical review and medication information at the bedside.
Kirsten began her professional life as a clinical pharmacist with HPS Pharmacies before moving into the position of National Performance Manager, responsible for ensuring key areas of clinical performance are met and national best practice standards are maintained.
“The idea for clinpod came from my work as a clinical pharmacist. I saw inefficient reporting practices occurring in hospitals that I thought could be improved,” says Kirsten.
“Pharmacists would take notes by hand when they visited patients which they’d have to type up after their ward rounds, double handling the information. There was no centralised database of patient medication information available for pharmacists to cross reference prescription information.
“I saw a great opportunity to make the whole process more streamlined, allowing the pharmacists more time to focus on their core job - working closely with patients and doctors.”
It wasn’t until HPS employed Dianne Mahar-Versace as National IT Manager that the project got off the ground.
Dianne brought 16 years’ experience in developing and implementing strategic IT solutions to HPS. She began working with Kirsten in early 2007 to create a technical solution for medication reporting in hospitals.
“I met with Kirsten and we discussed the requirements for t...
