Health information technology (Health IT) has made great strides in advancing medication safety. However, health IT has not yet fully solved the problem of communicating medication discontinuation orders between clinics and pharmacies in the outpatient setting. Medications that are discontinued in the clinic yet later dispensed at the pharmacy present significant risks for adverse drug events (an injury related to a medication/drug product).

Within the last decade, a new health IT functionality, termed CancelRx, emerged to electronically send a medication cancellation message from the clinic’s EHR to the pharmacy’s dispensing software and automatically discontinue the prescription record. Dr. Watterson’s research with the SAMS Lab during her dissertation was to assess the impact of CancelRx on medication safety as well as clinic and pharmacy work systems.

Notably, Dr. Watterson took novel approaches, such as Quantitative Ethnography, to assess implementation of CancelRx at community pharmacies in an academic health system. The findings highlight the importance of considering end-users and front-line staff when implementing novel Health IT—an individual’s perception of the problem, and how the innovation will solve that problem, may vary based on their role within the organization.

During Dr. Watterson’s postdoctoral fellowship, she researched the impact of another novel health IT, RxFill. RxFill integrates prescription dispensing information from the community pharmacy into the primary care EHR. She leverages multiple usability testing methodologies as well as wearable eye-tracking glasses to explore the usefulness, ease of use, and intended actual use of these functionalities. As part of the SCRPTS Lab, our future research aims to continue investigating the usability of these novel health IT and their ability to improve communication between health care team members and enhance patient safety.