West Middlesex Hospital goes live with tech to reduce prescribing errors
Ella Day | April 10, 2025 | News story | Information Technology, Manufacturing and Production | Dosium, NHS, Paediatrics, West Middlesex Hospital
Dosium Touchdose has gone live at West Middlesex University Hospital, UK, a clinical decision support technology proven to significantly reduce prescribing errors.
This follows go-live at both Chelsea and Westminster Hospital last month, and St Mary’s Hospital last summer, marking the final stage of rollout across the entire West London Children’s Healthcare (WLCH) partnership. WLCH brings together services for children and young people at Imperial College Healthcare and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.
West Middlesex clinicians will be encouraged to use the tool for all paediatric prescriptions. It automatically calculates the right dosage of drugs for any given patient, including prescription frequency, duration and route of administration. Information is taken from the Electronic Health Record (EHR), local guidance and integration with the British National Formulary for Children (BNFC).
Touchdose is proving effective already, as clinicians using it have been shown to be on average 83% less likely to make a prescribing error than those not using the tool. Rates of error dropped from 7.1% to 1.2% when used at St Mary’s Hospital.
Medication errors remain a pressing problem. In England, 237 million errors take place every year and around a third of them are categorised as clinically significant, meaning they cause harm or require further intervention. Children are acutely vulnerable to such errors due to their smaller size.
Ian Maconochie, CCIO at West London Children’s Healthcare and consultant in Children’s Emergency Medicine, said: “… a single, evidence-based approach to dosing means clinicians can prescribe with greater confidence, reducing their cognitive burden and risk of error in high-pressure environments.”
Chief executive officer and founder of Dosium, Nicholas Appelbaum, commented: “WLCH has taken an important step in improving prescribing safety. This kind of proactive, joined-up approach will help reduce errors and avoid harm before it happens.”
Ella Day
10/4/25
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