New Rx tech emerging as volumes grow

The health care system’s accelerating shift to electronic record-keeping and paperless prescriptions is driving the widespread adoption of systems that collect, transmit and store electronic medical records, a recent study has shown.

The fast-growing need for information technology systems that improve workflow and patient safety, reduce costs and boost the quality of patient care are fueling a surge in the market for EMR products and services, according to a new study from market research firm Kalorama Information. A report on the study, titled EMR Technologies in Health-care, predicts that sales of those products and services will soar from $1 billion in 2005 to more than $4 billion by 2015.

Behind the surge: a fast-growing demand for more efficient ways to transmit prescriptions, establish drug pedigrees and track patient compliance and treatment outcomes, noted researchers. Lending urgency to the quest for seamless integration of patient records with all facets of the healthcare provider network is the drive to e-prescribing from pharmacy groups, technology vendors who are putting hand-held communications and Internet connectivity into the hands of prescribing physicians, and e-prescribing platform providers such as SureScripts. Also fueling demand: calls from the Bush administration to convert the U.S. healthcare system to a health information technology platform by 2014.

“This is one area of health care where regulations such as HIPPA and various other government initiatives will actually help drive adoption of this advanced technology,” noted Kalorama publisher Steven Heffner.

Eventually, some experts predict, the health IT revolution will follow patients right into their homes with systems that monitor drug-therapy compliance and, possibly, even perform simple diagnostic functions.

On the dispensing front, pharmacy operators are looking for scalable automated systems that allow them to adapt more flexibility to rising prescription volumes and workflows. Such systems can range from simple devices that count the number of pills in a vial by weight, up to fully integrated robotic systems that pick, count, pour and label prescriptions at the touch of a button.

The new mantra for such systems is integration. Whether a simple countertop device for counting out pills, an automated bank of storage and retrieval cells for fast-turning pharmaceuticals, or a complete robotic system that puts filled and labeled prescription bottles right on a conveyor, such systems must mesh completely with a pharmacy’s legacy software for patient record-keeping, inventory control, drug pedigree requirements, workload balancing, instantaneous local drug-price updates from third-party payers and other necessities of modern pharmacy operations.