JK Science (Jan 2022)
3 Utility of Free Web Based Software for Identifying Potentially Teratogenic Medicines In Pregnancy
Abstract
Aim & Objective: To study and validate the clinical utility of free web-based software in picking up potentially and clearly harmful prescribed medicines with reference to FDA category.Materials and Methods: The present observational, cross-sectional, prospective, web-based prescription audit study was carried over a period of one year in a tertiary care teaching hospital. A total of 500 such prescriptions prescribed to pregnant women coming for routine antenatal checkup, irrespective of month of gestation, from any socioeconomic/ socio-demographic background were collected for one-point analysis. The analysis was carried out to evaluate specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value. Results: A total number of 1588 drugs were prescribed for 500 prescriptions studied with a mean of 3.17. Web-based free software picked up 1383 (87.09%) drugs, while rest 205 (12.91%) drugs were not picked up by the software. Potential teratogenic effect picked up by the software included 468 (29.48%) drugs. The sensitivity of software with reference to four textbooks varied from 70.76% to 60.32%, specificity 99.04% to 97.18%, positive predictive 98.29 to 94.87% and negative predictive value from 74.10% to 73.92%.Conclusion: Validation of drugs picked-up by the software as potential teratogenic was suboptimal as per sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were concerned.
