Rethinking the outpatient medication list: increasing patient activation and education while architecting for centralization and improved medication reconciliation.

OBJECTIVE: Identify barriers impacting the time consuming and error fraught process of medication reconciliation. Design and implement an electronic medication management system where patient and trusted healthcare proxies can participate in establishing and maintaining an inclusive and up-to-date list of medications.

METHODS: A patient-facing electronic medication manager was deployed within an existing research project focused on elder care management funded by the AHRQ, InfoSAGE, allowing patients and patients' proxies the ability to build and maintain an accurate and up-to-date medication list. Free and open-source tools available from the U.S. government were used to embed the tenets of centralization, interoperability, data federation, and patient activation into the design.

RESULTS: Using patient-centered design and free, open-source tools, we implemented a web and mobile enabled patient-facing medication manager for complex medication management.

CONCLUSIONS: Patient and caregiver participation are essential to improve medication safety. Our medication manager is an early step towards a patient-facing medication manager that has been designed with data federation and interoperability in mind.