Getting a brand new prescription will be overwhelming: medicine schedules, meals to eat or keep away from, interactions between totally different medicine. Having all of those particulars in accessible, printed paperwork retains sufferers knowledgeable and mitigates the chance of medicine errors.
Nevertheless, there’s a rising motion the world over to get rid of printed medicine info, making it tougher for sufferers to study in regards to the medicine that, in lots of circumstances, save their lives. The U.S. should resist the urge to observe swimsuit.
Lately, French well being authorities introduced a brand new plan to ship sufferers dwelling with QR codes linked to medicine info for generally prescribed, lifesaving medicine. Different nations have or at the moment are exploring insurance policies themselves. Lawmakers appear to assume that printed medicine info is out of date within the digital period and really feel that utilizing QR codes is a straightforward solution to “go inexperienced.” The U.S. could also be following swimsuit: The FDA not too long ago proposed a rule that might promote digital affected person medicine info whereas limiting entry to conventional printed variations. However this rule ignores the numerous public well being dangers of digitizing medicine info.
