Document Type

Research Project

Publication Date

Spring 4-2019

Abstract

The advent of electronic health records (EHR) and clinical decision support (CDS) has brought numerous changes in the healthcare field and has improved how patients receive care. The field of pharmacogenomics has made many breakthrough discoveries in the last few decades and these new advances have immensely reduced the cost of genetic testing. As advances have been made, researchers have discovered that individuals may respond to a medication differently due to genetic variants. There is a shift in the medical field from a one size fits all model to a personalized medicine model based on genetic information. Institutions have started to incorporate genetic information in their EHR and CDS systems to aid clinicians in the prescribing process. The rate of implementation is uneven among the institutions across the United States. Healthcare institutions have encountered some challenges associated with implementing pharmacogenomic data into CDS and EHR system. These challenges include lack of clinician education about pharmacogenomic data, poor user interface, and lack of resources for additional information for these alerts. If these challenges are overcome, there is great potential for pharmacogenomic CDS systems to help improve patient care and reduce adverse drug events.

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