Prevention of prescription errors by computerized, on-line, individual patient related surveillance of drug order entry.

Computerized prescription of drugs is expected to reduce the number of many preventable drug ordering errors. In the present study we evaluated the usefullness of a computerized drug order entry (CDOE) system in reducing prescription errors. A department of internal medicine using a comprehensive CDOE, which included also patient-related drug-laboratory, drug-disease and drug-allergy on-line surveillance was compared to a similar department in which drug orders were handwritten.