Evaluation of pharmacy-supplied half and quarter tablets at an academic medical center.

Purpose: Manipulation of tablet medications to produce a customized dose is common practice, and splitting tablets may reduce the acquisition cost of the medication. However, cost savings may be diminished by the cost of the increased labor and repackaging materials needed when splitting tablets. Splitting tablets may also result in safety concerns if the final products are under (eg, reduced benefit) or over (eg, toxicity) the desired dosage.

Implementation of hyperlinks to medication management policies and guidelines in the electronic health record.

Purpose: The implementation and maintenance of a process for adding and removing hyperlinks to medication management policies and guidelines approved by a pharmacy and therapeutics (P&T) committee into the electronic health record (EHR) are described.

Summary: Medication management policies and guidelines approved by the P&T committee are published on the University of Utah Health intranet, making it possible to add hyperlinks to this information within the EHR. Adding these hyperlinks allows policy and guideline information to be available to clinicians on the medication ordering, verification, and administration screens without requiring a separate search of the intranet.

[Action plan of the Federal Ministry of Health for improvement of medication safety in Germany : An inventory].

In 2008, the Federal Ministry of Health launched an action plan for the improvement of medication safety. The action plan includes measures to prevent medication errors. Implementation of the action plan is supported by national associations of all professional groups involved in the medication process as well as patient associations.

[Regulation (EC) No. 1394/2007 on advanced therapy medicinal products : Incorporation into national law].

Regulation (EC) No. 1394/2007 has created a new legal framework for advanced therapy medicinal products (gene therapy medicinal products, somatic cell therapy medicinal products and tissue engineered products). The Regulation is directly applicable in the Member States of the European Union and, in principle, requires no incorporation into national law.