Alberta's Pharmacy Information Network (PIN) is linked to Connect Care, including an "external information" function and tools for PIN medication reconciliation. It is possible to select medications to import to the Connect Care chart.
Nice idea. Cool feature. Unfortunately, the PIN reconciliation tools are proving more hindrance than help.
First, PIN is not a comprehensive or trustworthy representation of what a patient should be taking. It is a partial record of dispensed, not prescribed, medications.
Second, PIN data is interfaced in a way that does not permit capture of form/route/dose/frequency information. So, "importing" a PIN med still requires manual entry of all this information. Personalizations do not come into play. Common default values are not available. Experience is showing that it takes more time to reconcile PIN medication information than to quickly enter the patients meds using Connect Care order-entry tools.
Finally, the PIN medication information capture workflow is escaping from all of the decision supports built into normal order-entry and so it is not immediately apparent, for example, that one is entering a duplicate.
And, to add inconvenience to inefficiency, PIN seems to struggle with recognition of a patient's existing meds and so re-presents the need to reconcile even after this has been done.
For all these reasons, we have decided to turn off the PIN external medication reconciliation feature; at least for now. We will revisit this functionality when it becomes possible to import all dispensing information, not just the medication name.
A full PIN list remains available in Netcare, which can be displayed in-context from within Connect Care. This allows PIN to be informative, not intrusive.