The latest results from European Association of Hospital Pharmacists (EAHP) annual survey of hospital pharmacy practice are now available. A headline result from the almost 1000 responses from 33 countries is a perceived lack of support from hospital managers for the implementation of computerised decision support systems to reduce the risk of medication errors.

‘Computerised decision support systems’ refers to hospital wide software applications with prescribing support software and other functionalities designed to tackle common causes of error. Such systems reduce risk by eliminating hand written transcriptions, providing semi-automated error-checking possibilities, drug dose recommendations, and alerts for serious drug-drug reactions. They can also be linked to life saving systems such as bedside scanning of medicines to reduce administration error, specialised hospital pharmacy softwares to support pharmacy preparations and compounding, and more.

The latest findings emerged as part of a report into the extent to which the 44 European Statements of Hospital Pharmacy are being met in practice. Among the statements …