RightRx is a computer application that facilitates electronic medication reconciliation for hospital clinicians at all care transitions. The aim of the software is to help reduce the risk of adverse drug events and hospital readmissions. This will be accomplished through:

• Optimizing the accuracy of medication histories
• automated integration of data from hospital and community-based pharmacy information systems to improve efficiency and accuracy in documenting and reconciling community and hospital drugs.
• Side by side alignment of community and in-hospital medications, reducing the time required to reconcile the medication lists at the time of admission, transfer, and discharge.
• Efficient and automatic communication of the changes made during hospitalization with the community pharmacies and physicians, so that prescriptions for drugs that are discontinued because of adverse effects or ineffective treatment do not continue to be filled.

ADEs are the 6^th leading cause of death and cost over $5.6 million per hospital, per year¹. Although up to a quarter of admissions to acute care hospitals are related to ADEs, at least 58% of these ADEs are preventable, since they result from incomplete drug information, prescribing or dispensing errors, and overuse or underuse of medication².

The convergence of increasingly complex care plans, an aging patient population, and multiple transfers between care settings (e.g. long term, acute care, and community) account for a majority of the preventable errors that ultimately result in ADEs.

Reconciliation of community-based and in-hospital medications is a critical requirement to reduce the risk of preventable adverse drug-related events during transitions in care.

This unique opportunity is made possible thanks to the work of Dr. Robyn Tamblyn who has established a “real-time” link to the Quebec health insurance agency (RAMQ) to test the benefits of accessing the complete drug profile in primary care.