Development of SW interface between healthcare standards-DASTA and HL7

Abstract

The prescription and administration of drugs are the most common process that takes place in hospitals. Although a relatively simple process, it is considered the riskiest process in hospitals because mistakes during drug administration are among the most common ones. The aim is to introduce technological and process changes that will contribute to maximally increase the safety of the medication process and the efficiency of drug management. To support the automation of the medication process, it is desirable to use the international standard Health Level 7 (HL7). However, the Czech healthcare system currently supports the local healthcare standard-DASTA. For that reason, the paper introduces some of the options how to transfer data from DASTA to HL7 and deals with the development of a software (SW) interface that converts data necessary for robotic preparation of patient medication from the Czech DASTA data standard to the HL7 international standard used by selected robotics. Based on the performed analyses, a combination of robotics for the preparation of single-dose packages of drugs with one of the automated warehouses is recommended.