A systematic review of medication safety and clinical outcomes related to drug interaction software.

We conducted a systematic search of MEDLINE, EMBASE, IPA, HealthStar and CINAHL, for English language, post-1990, prospective studies examining electronic drug interaction checking (eDIC) on the outcome of adverse drug interactions (ADI). Excluded studies were not prospective or measured non-patient specific outcomes. Four of 5848 studies were included. Bayesian pooled meta-analysis showed no difference in ADIs (relative risk is 0.66, 95% CI 0.33 to 1.18.). Not only is there a lack of rigorous evaluations of eDIC, the evidence available does not suggest benefit even for the surrogate outcome of adverse drug interactions.