issues before such strategies are implemented and aggressively solving technological problems during the implementation process. Regulatory issues must also be addressed for electronic transmission of prescriptions to be practical.

To deliver safe drug care, health care organizations should make effective use of well-designed technologies, which will vary by setting. Although the evidence for this assertion is strongest in the inpatient setting (AHRQ, 2005), the use of technology will undoubtedly lead to major improvements in all settings. In acute care, technologies should target prescribing by including computerized provider order entry with clinical decision support. Administration is also a particularly vulnerable stage in the medication-use process, and several technologies are likely to be especially important in this stage. These include electronic medication administration records, which can improve documentation of what medications have been given and when, as well as machine-readable identification, such as bar coding, and smart IV infusion pumps. All these technologies should be linked electronically.

In nursing homes, computerized prescribing with decision support will likely be important, although there has been little research on its efficacy (Gurwitz et al., 2005). Moreover, implementation of computerized prescribing in this setting will be challenging since most nursing homes have very limited resources.

Some evidence suggests that computerized prescribing will be important in the outpatient setting as well (Gandhi et al., 2003), although it may not yield significant safety benefits without added decision support. Equally important are likely to be approaches that improve communication between patients and providers.

The delivery of care often involves moving the locus of care among sites and providers. These “handoffs” are fraught with errors. One strategy for reducing errors during these care transitions is to reconcile medication orders between transition points, especially between care settings such as hospital and outpatient, but also between points within organizations, such as the intensive care unit and a general care unit. This reconciliation involves comparing what a patient is taking in one setting with what is being provided in another to avoid errors of transcription and omission, duplication of therapy, and drug–drug and drug–disease interactions. This process typically reveals many discrepancies (Pronovost et al., 2003).