The main function of pharmaceutical care is to dispense drugs. The process of drug dispensing is getting simpler as a result of the development of automated dispensing systems, however the traditional dispensing system/process, manually selecting drugs from shelves and transferring the correct number of dose units to labeled paper bags, is complicated and still adopted in a majority of hospital pharmacies in Japan. The complicated dispensing process leads to human error. Thus, pharmacists must address and minimize human error in drug dispensing. To address human error in dispensing, we adopted a dispensing support system (Patient oriented risk management system: PORIMS) with using personal digital assistance (PDA). In this study, to evaluate efficiency PORIMS in dispensing incidents, we categorized dispensing incidents into 2 groups, prevented dispensing incidents (PreDIs) and dispensing incidents (DIs), and then investigated the number of dispensing incidents. Incidents were recorded and categorized when a pharmacist double-checked assembled products/medication. As a result, the total number of PreDIs was significantly reduced by using PORIMS, 52.4 to 39.5 /1,000 prescriptions/month (P < 0.001). Selection errors and forgetful dispensing were completely prevented. Counting errors were significantly reduced by recording the number of agents before assembly (13.85 ± 3.19 to 5.37 ± 1.15/month, P = 0.026). The use of PORIMS was associated with a decrease in the number of reports on drug dispensing errors. In this study, we clearly demonstrated that PORIMS should be useful in the prevention of human error in drug dispensing. PORIMS enhances the performance of pharmacists.Key words -dispensing error, dispensing incident, personal digital assistance, dispensing support system, recording the number of agents, safety management

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