Action ADE: Enabling Cross-setting Communication to Prevent Adverse Drug Events

Adverse drug events (ADEs) are the harmful and unintended consequences of medication use. ADEs have become a leading cause of outpatient visits, emergency department visits, and unplanned admissions to hospital. Many of these events are not strictly pharmacological, but rather are related to practical challenges in the coordination of care,prescribing, dispensing, and medication use, and may be preventable with new modes of documentation and communication for medication management. Action ADE is a CSCW intervention that aims to enable communication of patient ADE information across healthcare settings in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Implementing Action ADE requires negotiations of political agendas and policy change, evolving medical information system infrastructures, and the needs and practices of clinicians and patients. As the initial design phase for Action ADE comes to a close and we enter into our first phase of piloting and implementation, this poster provides a snapshot of five domains in which our project intervenes and highlights findings from our extensive qualitative work.