Preventing medicine related emergency department visits in people with renal impairment

Opportunity 

Medication-related harm remains a major contributor to preventable hospital admissions in Australia. People living with chronic kidney disease are particularly vulnerable because many medicines require dose adjustment based on kidney function. Remote and Aboriginal communities experience higher rates of kidney disease and hospitalisation.  

This project saw an opportunity to use data to improve medicine selection and dosing for patients living with renal impairment. 

Project Objectives  

This project investigated using medicine databases to create an accurate renal dosage decision support tool for primary care. The team set out to take an iterative and collaborative approach to analyse current medicine prescribing and dispensing patterns and workflows, looking to deliver a clinical decision support tool with an underlying set of clinically valid rules based on Northern Territory (NT) clinical datasets and medicine knowledge resources. This solution could then be piloted in remote primary care settings in the NT and evaluated on its impacts on prescribing appropriateness and health outcomes for recommendations on opportunities to improve the current system.