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November 27, 2000

Wireless Service Averts Costly Prescription Errors

OnCalldata lets physicians track drugs and send prescriptions to pharmacies using PDAs

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ireless service provider InstantDX LLC launched OnCallData last week. The company says the service will help eliminate prescription drug mistakes caused by illegible handwriting and also save patients and doctors time.

More than 2 million cases of prescription errors caused by poor handwriting are reported annually in the United States, according to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices. InstantDX's service is designed to help doctors write and send prescriptions more efficiently via Wireless Application Protocol-enabled cell phones and personal digital assistants.

Physicians can subscribe to OnCallData through InstantDX or Verizon Wireless. Once users bookmark the OnCallData site on their PDAs, they have instant access to patient reports they've already entered on the site and can send prescriptions to pharmacies electronically. Moreover, physicians can track prescriptions using a device they can take anywhere, says Joe Gangi, executive VP of InstantDX.

The service is also a timesaver. Calling in a prescription can take up to 20 minutes, Gangi says; OnCallData can handle transactions in seconds.

"Anything that allows me to see one more patient a day and gives me a little extra free time on the weekends is a bonus," says Dr. Irnie Oser of Oser and Tauber MDPA, a private practice in Silver Spring, Md., that's been using OnCallData for about a month. Oser says the service is easy to use, even for the most technophobic physicians, and it has let him expedite the prescription-filling process.

Available now, OnCallData is priced at about $29.95 per month per physician. The company is also developing software, scheduled for the first quarter of next year, that will work with patient-management systems, and connect to labs, insurance carriers, and pharmacies.