Background The restricted use policy was established to assist the correct use of medicines. The Pharmacy and Infections Committee agreed to authorise indications for use that accorded with treatment protocols and clinical practice guidelines; once these prescribing rules were decided, the next step was pharmaceutical validation of the prescriptions. Computer-assisted prescribing provides information to prescribers and facilitates checking. Purpose To assess the usefulness of computer-assisted prescribing in restricted-use drugs in our hospital. Materials and methods The PRESEL application is used for electronic prescribing. Restricted drugs and the indications for their authorised use were defined in PRESEL. When prescribing these medicines it was necessary to type the clinical indication; at the same time authorised indications were shown on screen as advice. During the validation process the pharmacist could accept the prescription or not, and record the prescribing indication in PRESEL. At the time of this study, our hospital used computer-assisted prescribing for 49% of surgical beds. Prescriptions written between June 2010 and May 2011 were studied. Information about the restricted-use drugs prescribed, authorised indications, and clinical unit prescriptions were collected and analysed. Results During the study period, there were 50,990 electronic prescriptions for 5,210 patients. 113 restricted-drug prescriptions for 10 different drugs were recorded. None of them was rejected. The antimycotics posaconazole and micafungin were the most prescribed (37%), followed by the antibiotics tigecycline and linezolid (28%). The most frequent indication for antimycotics was ‘prophylaxis of fungal infections in immunocompromised haematopoietic stem cell transplantation recipients’; for antibiotics the most frequent was ‘complicated intra-abdominal infection’. The majority of prescriptions were written on the Haematology (65.49%), Infectious Diseases (7.96%), Surgery (5.31%) and Neurology (5.31%) wards. Conclusions In our hospital antifungals and antibiotics are most common restricted-use drugs. Haematology and Infectious clinical services are the main prescribers. Computer-assisted prescription applications are useful to set restrictions and to check if prescriptions comply.

Background Oral chemotherapy agents are medications that were dispensed in pharmacies usually but since the entry into force of an order regional president in January 2011 became hospital dispensing. Purpose To analyse the economic and healthcare impact of the inclusion of oral chemotherapy agents in a outpatient dispensing unit. Materials and methods The study period runs from 23th January to 30th September, 2011. During this period, 16 chemotherapy agents have been acquired and dispensed in our unit: anagrelide, capecitabine, cyclophosphamide, chlorambucil, dasatinib, erlotinib, gefitinib, hydroxyurea, imatinib, lapatinib, melphalan, sorafenib, sunitinib, nilotinib, tretinoin, temozolomide. For the economic analysis estimates the cost of which has led to the introduction of oral chemotherapy compared to other outpatient dispensations of haematology, oncology and urology, which are the units that consume such medicines data were obtained through the computer application outpatient dispensing (DIPEX) and management software (Sinfhos), was also evaluated consumption of each active ingredient included. Results During this period, the number of patients who where dispensed oral chemotherapy were 388; it's means the 26,7% of patients attending in the outpatient unit. Consumption in this period for each area not including the dispensing of oral chemotherapy was: Haematology: 691,586.9€; Oncology: 280,038.23€; Urology: 27,754.74 € and consumption at the same time and each area including the dispensing of oral chemotherapy was: Haematology: 1,428,089.71€; Oncology: 907,203.66€; Urology: 96,641.97€. Representing an increase of 48.42% in consumption of Haematology, a 30.86% in Oncology and a 28.72% in Urology. The most dispensed drugs were: capecitabine 12,74%, dasatinib 9,48%, erlotinib 12,28%, imatinib 25,21%, lapatinib 5,25% and sunitinib 10,13%. Nobody was joined the staff to reinforce the outpatient unit. Conclusions 16 new oral chemotherapy agents were acquired during this period, this has meant an overall increase in consumption of 243.43%, The drug is highest cost was imatinib. The number of patients increased by 26,7%, a very important increase of work without increase in the staff budget.