Clinical Safety Issue – Pregnancy and Breast Feeding Related Prescribing Warnings Potentially Displaying Inaccurately in Vision 3 and Vision Anywhere

OneAdvanced has been made aware of an issue relating to pregnancy and breast feeding related prescribing warnings possibly not displaying accurately in Vision 3 and Vision Anywhere when prescribing drugs to patients. This could be in both erroneously flagging a patient is pregnant / breast-feeding when they are not, and not flagging when they are. This issue is as a result of certain SNOMED codes relating to pregnancy / breast-feeding not having been added to the appropriate data subsets used in Vision product pregnancy and breast-feeding prescribing decision support algorithms.

This presents a clinical safety risk with implications for patient care. There is a risk that a pregnant / breast feeding patient could be prescribed a drug that is harmful to the foetus / infant because the prescriber is not shown a pregnancy / breast feeding related prescribing warning. For example, Ramipril - contraindicated in pregnancy. Some mitigation for this risk is currently available in that prescribing during pregnancy / breast feeding is known to be a high-risk area and clinicians often check reference materials (UKTIS, BNF, drug manufacturer’s SPC) before prescribing for safety, rather than relying solely on electronic prescribing decision support, however that does rely on the prescribing clinician being aware that the patient is pregnant / breast feeding, which they may not be.