Executive Summary

Industry experience with inpatient clinical documentation and ordering systems has demonstrated the importance of providing clinicians with tools that enable real-time access to information at the points of care and decision. Children’s Hospital (Children’s) in Omaha, Nebraska, has deployed the Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager™ EMR and provided access through desktop PCs and computers on wheels (COWs). In daily use, however, it became clear that access to fixed devices in the Children’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) led to impediments in the pharmacists’ workflow and made it difficult to fully optimize the EMRs’ potential. Studies have indicated that the role of the clinical pharmacist is vital to ensuring the accuracy of drug selection and dosing, which is particularly important for pediatric patients, decreasing costs, and potentially improving length of stay.