eMedication Meets eHealth with the Electronic Medication Management Assistant (eMMA).

Background: A patient’s healthcare team is often missing a complete
overview on the prescribed and dispensed medication. This is due to an inconsistent
information flow between the different actors of the healthcare system. Often, only
the patient himself knows exactly which drugs he is actually taking. Objectives: Our
objective is to exploit different eHealth technologies available or planned in
Switzerland to improve the information flow of the medication data among the
stakeholder and to support the patient in managing his medication.Methods: This
work is embedded in the "Hospital of the Future Live" project, involving 16
companies and 6 hospitals in order to develop IT solutions for future optimized
health care processes. A comprehensive set of requirements was collected from the
different actors and project partners. Further, specifications of the available or
planned eHealth infrastructure were reviewed to integrate relevant technologies into
a coherent concept. Results: We developed a concept that combines the medication
list and an eHealth platform. The resulting electronic medication management
assistant (eMMA) designed for the patient provides the current medication plan at
any time and supports by providing relevant information through a conversational
user interface. Conclusion: In Switzerland, we still need a bridging technology to
combine the medication information from the electronic patient record with the
medication plan's associated QR-Code. The developed app is intended to provide
such bridge and demonstrates the usefulness of the eMediplan. It enables the patient
to have all data regarding his medication on his personal mobile phone and he can -
if necessary - provide the current medication to the health professional.
Keywords. EHealth, Electronic Prescription, Medication Safety, Medication
System, Conversational UI, mHealth