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• The pharmacist wants to see the following extra information per medication line:
  • Name of the health care provider who prescribed / adjusted the medication. This information is sent with the medication scheme to Vitalink. This gives added value to the interpretation of the scheme and in this way it is clear to other care providers which medication is prescribed by who.
  • For which pathology is the medication prescribed? (not compulsory to enter during prescribing, but desirable. This will usually be entered by the GPgeneral practitioner).

• In addition, the pharmacist also has certain expectations regarding the visualization and use of this medication scheme. The pharmacist does not view this as a static page, but wants to use it for:
  
  • Adjusting intake moments: provide dynamic input fields to adjust the intake moments to the medication scheme itself (bi-directional operation).
  • Removing a medication line: provide check boxes to select one or more medication line(s) and remove them with one click (this gives the pharmacist a complete overview of all active medication before removal).
  • Adjusting a medication line: double click (or other action such as right-click) on a medication line leads to the prescription module where, for example, the posology can be adjusted.
  • Not showing a medication line on Vitalink (by default, everything is on 'show on Vitalink').
  • Adding a note: provide a dynamic input field to enter a comment on a medication line (in this way the comments field will be used more and better).
  • To upload the complete medication scheme to Vitalink (validate).
  • Placing the medication scheme on a 'to do' list for later upload to Vitalink (delayed validation).

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• Ensure that the pharmacist can easily switch between the different display types.

• Keep the preference for a specific type of display for each patient, so that the pharmacist can know which type he / she should select during a subsequent consultation.

How to handle mistakes

Mandatory

If a medication scheme is removed from Vitalink and can not be fully visualized by the interpreting software package (eg if there is a problem with a medication line, posology or other), it is important to get as much information as possible on each medication line so that 'something' in the Vitalink medication scheme can be shown.

The pharmacist who collects this 'incomplete' Vitalink medication scheme also wants to see the incomplete / incorrect information. If necessary, he/she can supplement the incomplete / incorrect / missing information from his/her professional expertise.

If possible, as much of the information as possible should be retrieved from the medication line until the information can no longer be read (due to the corrupted construction) (eg if posology is still correct this can also be downloaded but for example the intake moments are not).

The rest of the information (from the corrupted construction) should be downloaded as 'free text' (shown in the comments field). In this way, the pharmacist can supplement the Vitalink medication scheme as well as possible.

Pharmacists are open to refilling this again; it is better to have minimal information regarding the active medication of the patient than no information (eg now the complete Vitalink medication scheme is sometimes blocked by one corrupted medication line).

A medication line that lacks information must be displayed as an 'alert' so that this clearly stands out in the combined overview. More information about the error is given at mouse-over or click on the medication line.

When at the end of a consultation the medication scheme can not be uploaded to Vitalink, pharmacists often receive error messages that they do not understand.

It is important that the pharmacist is well informed why the medication scheme can not be uploaded to Vitalink. Inform the pharmacist in a targeted and concrete manner. Avoid technical error messages (translate the return code and show the technical error message only after the error message that is formulated in an understandable way). For example:

• "The Vitalink medication scheme can not be uploaded. There is an error in the medication line medication x."

• "The Vitalink medication scheme can not be uploaded. There is currently no connection possible with Vitalink."

Recommendations

• Provide sufficient functional & technical tests to prevent bugs.
• Ensure that the pharmacist can complete the information in an easy way.