News on e-prescribing

Time this week published a small piece by Jeremy Caplan discussing the role of electronic prescribing tools in eliminating some medication errors - "Cause of death: sloppy doctors." It focuses on the National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative, which launched this week and will provide a free web-based eprescribing tool to doctors.

The article also notes that Google is working with the NEPSI project to develop a search engine to aid physicians in finding health data.

Related:
- the National e-prescribing Patient Safety Initiative, discussed on CNN Money and GovernmentHealth IT (also includes a list of collaborating companies and healthcare organizations)
- related federal regulations
- a PubMed search, retrieving a number of articles discussing challenges and benefits of e-prescribing