Effect on Patient Safety of Brief Interventions Performed by Pharmacists via Drug Profile Books: VISualization of Treatment Assist by pharmacists (VISTA) Project in Japan

In Japanese pharmacies, Drug Profile Books (DPBs), which are a type of Personal Health Record (PHR), are incorporated in order to prevent duplicate medication and drug interactions in outpatients (patients) through the uniform management of drug administration information. In this study, we tried to clarify the effect on patient safety of brief interventions via DPBs by pharmacists. The study design was a randomized controlled trial on pharmacies as clusters. 65 pharmacies agreed to participate in the study (intervention group (IG): 33; control group (CG): 32). The primary outcomes were: rate of inquiry occurrence, rate of prescription change, and rates of duplicate medications & drug interactions. 56 pharmacies (IG: 29; CG: 27) completed the study. There was a higher tendency for prescription changes in the IG compared to the CG (IG: 0.03%; CG: 0.02%; P = 0.08). In addition, the rate of duplicate medications & drug interactions accounting for the inquiries was significantly higher in the IG than in the CG (IG: 89.2%; CG: 71.9%; P = 0.01). This implied that brief interventions by pharmacists using DPBs had an effect in raising patient safety.