Can More Be Done to Prevent Medication Errors?
With more Americans than ever using smartphones, several qualified parties have developed apps that can help patients identify and learn about the medications they are taking. Former physicians and the federal government are among these groups attempting to create a safer means for taking medications.
The National Institutes of Health is working on an app that can use photographs a person has taken of a medication and match it to Google’s enormous caches of information to help identify what they are taking. The app should greatly benefit the elderly, who often take more than one prescription pill and are more prone to misidentifying those pills.
How Do Medication Errors Cause Injuries and Deaths?
Medication errors are a form of medical malpractice that kills and injures unsuspecting victims every year. It is estimated that 2 percent of all medications are filled incorrectly, about 30 to 50 million prescriptions every year.
Pharmacies are not entirely to blame, and sometimes doctors can prescribe the wrong kind of medication, leading to an adverse event that can end in injury or death. According to Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, medication errors do not only target adults, but children as well. It is estimated that a child receives either the wrong dosage or medication every eight minutes.
Medical malpractice can be difficult to prove, and it takes an experienced attorney to go through medical bills, hire experts to build a case and handle insurance companies. Shapiro Law Group has decades of experience and has a team of medical malpractice attorneys who have spent their careers helping the victims of acts of medical negligence.
Shapiro Law Group – Medical Malpractice Attorneys Serving the Tampa Bay Area
Did You Know? The Food and Drug Administration rejects 300 drug names a year because they sound similar to existing drugs on the market.
