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Patients get mislabelled medicine after IT glitch

This article is more than 12 months old

General practice clinics across the island hit with computer glitch that changed prescription units on labels

One patient was told to take 10 bottles of cough mixture each time, instead of 10ml. Another had to take two strips, instead of two tablets.

These were some of the mistakes 83 general practice clinics around the country faced on Saturday, when a glitch hit GPConnect, the computer system they were on.

About 400 patients who had visited general practice clinics from Saturday morning had received wrongly labelled medicine.

Launched early last year, GPConnect is an administrative system that allows general practitioners (GPs) to submit patient data to the National Electronic Health Record (NEHR).

It is run by the Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS), the government IT organisation that caters to medical practice. More than 200 clinics have signed up, but only about 150 are currently on it.

An IHiS spokesman told The Straits Times the problem on Saturday was caused by a planned system update.

She said: "While the quantity of medication was correctly dispensed, the labels were incorrectly printed in some cases.

"Patient safety is our priority. We take this incident very seriously and deeply apologise for the error."

The problem - which changed the prescription unit, such as from ml to bottle - has been fixed and all the clinics had been told by Sunday.

The clinics have been contacting affected patients to tell them of the error. She said IHiS is doing a thorough review to ensure it does not happen again.

Patient safety is our priority. We take this incident very seriously and deeply apologise for the error. IHIS spokesman

One doctor, who did not want to be named, said he was told of the glitch only on Sunday. He had to call patients up to tell them to ignore the instructions given with the medicine.

He had signed on to GPConnect because of the requirement for all doctors to submit patient data online to the NEHR after the Healthcare Services Bill is enacted.

But he said the system is not robust enough yet and his clinic has experienced different glitches since he joined last year.

In March, GPs could not upload information for some hours but were able to use the system offline.

When he complained about Saturday's glitch, the system operator told him it was his clinic's fault for not checking.

He said: "We computerise so work is more efficient. We check on the computer and it is correct, so we expect the printout to also be correct."

Another GP, Dr Choo Kay Wee of A Life Clinic at Novena Medical Centre, said GPConnect is better than some of the other systems he has used.

He said the system is generally reliable, although there are occasional glitches. But his clinic checks everything so none of the mistakes reaches the patients.

Dr Khaw May May of Killiney Medical Clinic agreed, saying that the clinic's receptionist would always check the labels before giving the medicine to patients so that errors can be detected.

Dr Choo said: "It is a new system, so glitches are expected. The important thing is how fast they rectify the problem. IHiS has a team of very dedicated people."

MEDICAL & HEALTH