ALKHOBAR: This week the material appearing on the Arab News CompuNet pages was created from the confines of my bed. This was not some sort of exercise to demonstrate anytime, anywhere computing. Rather, it was a consequence of compounded stupidity.
What began for me as a minor rash two weeks ago, eventually morphed into a systemic cardiac problem. This happened when two physicians at the same local hospital prescribed medications for me that when taken together had serious side effects. The error wasn’t discovered until I dug through a meter long medication packaging insert, which advised against the combination.
After weeks of popping those pills, I was terribly ill. The entire mess could have been averted if I’d simply entered the medication names into the drug interaction checker at www.drugs.com. Once I did so, in seconds the database spit out a terrible truth. I had been poisoning myself with the assistance of two doctors, pharmacists and an insurance provider. An immediate return to the scene of the malpractice, produced an amazing round of finger pointing. This brought me to the conclusion that in the future I must personally investigate the consequences of ingesting any medication, whether over-the counter or physician prescribed.
It is very disturbing to note that in a country such as Saudi Arabia, where medical personnel are recruited from numerous countries and where the patients they treat are also from a broad international community, that IT systems to reduce medication errors have not been made mandatory. Some pharmacies abroad advertise these systems as a means of attracting customers, advising that if all a person’s medications are purchased from one pharmacy, then the IT system will provide information on drug interactions and increase consumer safety. For health facilities and pharmacies such systems might be thought of as an increase in overhead. What isn’t clear though is why Saudi insurance companies haven’t implemented such technology? All the original medications prescribed by the doctors were paid for by the insurance company — as well as the additional physician visits and further medication to treat the illness that resulted from the dispensing error. If the insurance company had a system which simply compared all medications prescribed to the same patient, looking for potential drug reactions, the mistake would never have happened. Such information systems are commonly used as a cost saving measure by health insurers in other geographies.
This was a hard lesson learned and things could have been worse. So take my advice. While you’re still at the clinic, connect to the Internet with your mobile phone and bring up the drug interaction checker at drugs.com. Enter the medications prescribed and discuss the results with a pharmacist before treatment begins. The interaction checker considers both drug interactions and food interactions. It’s free protection for your health and there’s nothing more important to protect.
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