Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | |
Founded | 1978 |
Headquarters | 701 Gateway Blvd., Suite 600 South San Francisco, California, U.S. |
Key people |
|
Number of employees | 400 |
Parent | Hearst Communications |
Website | fdbhealth |
First Databank (FDB) is a major provider of drug and medical device databases that help inform healthcare professionals to make decisions. [1] FDB partners with information system developers to deliver useful medication- and medical device-related information to clinicians, business associates, and patients. FDB is part of Hearst and the Hearst Health network.
First Databank was founded in 1977 as a company that published a quarterly magazine of drug prices. They were bought by Hearst Corporation in 1980. First Databank then evolved to become a provider of clinical and descriptive drug knowledge that is integrated into healthcare information systems globally. FDB has its headquarters in San Francisco, California, and has other offices in Indianapolis, Indiana, Exeter, England, Dubai, UAE and Hyderabad, India.
The firm's drug databases support pharmacy dispensing, formulary management, drug pricing analysis, claims processing, computerized physician order entry (CPOE), electronic health records (EHR), electronic medical records (EMR), electronic prescribing (e-Prescribing), electronic medication administration records (EMAR), population health and telemedicine/telehealth.
Beginning in 2011, First Databank's set of National Drug Codes (NDCs) have been integrated into RxNorm's standard clinical drug vocabulary that includes all medications available on the US market. [1] RxNorm is produced and maintained by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM).
In 2017, FDB acquired Polygot Systems, which simplifies drug information for patients and translates that information into 21 languages. [2]
In 2018, FDB partnered with PetIQ to release the first veterinary medication database to provide information on pet medications structured for integration into pharmacy systems. [3]
Beginning in 2020, FDB partnered with Amazon and its Alexa devices to provide drug information and answer medication questions. [4]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, FDB posted drug data (regarding remdesivir, chloroquine, and hydroxychloroquine) and medical device-related coronavirus information to its website. [5]
In August 2021, the company announced a partnership with RxRevu to provide integrated decision support tools to improve patient access to care, delivering patient-specific pharmacy benefit information to EHR workflows via direct connections with pharmacy benefit managers. The technology displays accurate, real-time data at the point of prescribing, allowing physicians to find affordable alternatives for medications specific to a patient's health needs and insurance benefits. FDB will offer RxRevu's prescription cost and coverage solution to current and future hospital, health system, and EHR clients. [6]
First Databank's MedKnowledge provides prices, descriptions, and collateral clinical information on drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), plus unapproved drugs, commonly used over-the-counter drugs, herbal remedies, medical foods and nutritional supplements.
First Databank has developed a drug ordering knowledge base that enables physicians to look up and order drugs. Drug orders are generated based on patient parameters such as age, weight, renal and hepatic impairment, thereby reducing lists of candidate drugs to a minimum. The database is expected to affect the number of adverse drug reactions and side effects at facilities that have adopted the electronic order entry systems.
A web-based software tool that enables institution-specific modification of medication alerts using FDB MedKnowledge clinical modules based on clinician input, localized clinical experience, and other available evidence. The tool allows users to edit or turn off individual alerts, track all alert customizations and create an audit record, and view FDB updates in comparison with the user's own modifications. Users can load the results of their modifications directly into their medication decision support system for immediate use in the workflow. The approach follows the normal update process.
The FDB Prizm medical device database provides structured, categorized, and normalized information about medical device products that are implanted into patients; hospital and durable medical equipment; and medical supplies. The medical device content comes from a variety of sources such as the FDA, medical device manufacturers, and industry data pools. Also, it encompasses additional information from clinical, operational, and financial attributes and codes. Use of this database within supply chain and other information systems is designed to help decision makers to build and maintain device libraries, identify and document medical devices in case of recalls and adverse events, and group and analyze medical device utilization.
Meducation comprises simplified medication instructions and medication regimen calendars using patient-specific information from the electronic health record (EHR). All material is written at a 5th to 8th grade reading level with supporting pictograms in more than 20 languages and is designed to help reduce medication errors and improve medication adherence for all patients. [7]
FDB Targeted Medication Warnings provides patient-specific clinical decision support (CDS) for medications and is integrated directly into the EHR workflow. This content uses lab results, risk scores, and other patient data to suggest clinical guidance that is most relevant to the patient context. The CDS derived from this solution provides specificity for clinical decisions and is linked to the related generic medication alerts which can be filtered out/customized using FDB AlertSpace. [8]
FDB Pet MedKnowledge is a comprehensive drug database with veterinary FDA approved medications, allowing veterinarians to access pet medication information whenever and wherever is needed. The service is modeled on the FDB MedKnowledge human medication database. [9]
A consumer coalition filed separate suits in a Boston, Massachusetts federal court against drug wholesaler McKesson Corporation and First Databank, accusing the companies of artificially inflating drug prices. The lawsuits say that McKesson and FDB conspired from 2002 through 2005 to set the list prices artificially high. The suit against First DataBank accused it of limiting its survey of wholesalers to a single company, McKesson. [10]
First Databank agreed to a settlement, tentatively approved by the federal court, in which it would not pay damages to the plaintiffs, but agreed to reduce average wholesale prices (AWPs) listed in its databases by five percent for about 2,033 drugs. [11] McKesson chose to fight the suits.
The settlement required First DataBank (FDB) to reduce the AWP mark-up from 1.25 to 1.20 times the Wholesale Acquisition Cost (WAC) for 1,442 NDCs identified in the litigation. FDB set the mark-up at 1.20 for all drugs independent of the litigation on September 26, 2009. The roll back of the WAC-to-AWP spread led to a 4% reduction in their AWP. FDB also stopped publishing AWP data on September 26, 2011, two years after the rollback adjustments were implemented. First DataBank continues to publish non-AWP drug pricing information, including WAC, Direct Price, and suggested wholesale price. [12]
A prescription, often abbreviated ℞ or Rx, is a formal communication from a physician or other registered healthcare professional to a pharmacist, authorizing them to dispense a specific prescription drug for a specific patient. Historically, it was a physician's instruction to an apothecary listing the materials to be compounded into a treatment—the symbol ℞ comes from the first word of a medieval prescription, Latin recipere, that gave the list of the materials to be compounded.
Health informatics is the study and implementation of computer structures and algorithms to improve communication, understanding, and management of medical information. It can be viewed as a branch of engineering and applied science.
A medical classification is used to transform descriptions of medical diagnoses or procedures into standardized statistical code in a process known as clinical coding. Diagnosis classifications list diagnosis codes, which are used to track diseases and other health conditions, inclusive of chronic diseases such as diabetes mellitus and heart disease, and infectious diseases such as norovirus, the flu, and athlete's foot. Procedure classifications list procedure code, which are used to capture interventional data. These diagnosis and procedure codes are used by health care providers, government health programs, private health insurance companies, workers' compensation carriers, software developers, and others for a variety of applications in medicine, public health and medical informatics, including:
An electronic health record (EHR) is the systematized collection of patient and population electronically stored health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared through network-connected, enterprise-wide information systems or other information networks and exchanges. EHRs may include a range of data, including demographics, medical history, medication and allergies, immunization status, laboratory test results, radiology images, vital signs, personal statistics like age and weight, and billing information.
Computerized physician order entry (CPOE), sometimes referred to as computerized provider order entry or computerized provider order management (CPOM), is a process of electronic entry of medical practitioner instructions for the treatment of patients under his or her care.
A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a health information technology that provides clinicians, staff, patients, and other individuals with knowledge and person-specific information to help health and health care. CDSS encompasses a variety of tools to enhance decision-making in the clinical workflow. These tools include computerized alerts and reminders to care providers and patients, clinical guidelines, condition-specific order sets, focused patient data reports and summaries, documentation templates, diagnostic support, and contextually relevant reference information, among other tools. CDSSs constitute a major topic in artificial intelligence in medicine.
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A patient safety organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection, analysis, reporting, education, funding, and advocacy. A PSO differs from a Federally designed Patient Safety Organization (PSO), which provides health care providers in the U.S. privilege and confidentiality protections for efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of patient care delivery
Health information technology (HIT) is health technology, particularly information technology, applied to health and health care. It supports health information management across computerized systems and the secure exchange of health information between consumers, providers, payers, and quality monitors. Based on a 2008 report on a small series of studies conducted at four sites that provide ambulatory care – three U.S. medical centers and one in the Netherlands, the use of electronic health records (EHRs) was viewed as the most promising tool for improving the overall quality, safety and efficiency of the health delivery system.
Electronic prescription is the computer-based electronic generation, transmission, and filling of a medical prescription, taking the place of paper and faxed prescriptions. E-prescribing allows a physician, physician assistant, pharmacist, or nurse practitioner to use digital prescription software to electronically transmit a new prescription or renewal authorization to a community or mail-order pharmacy. It outlines the ability to send error-free, accurate, and understandable prescriptions electronically from the healthcare provider to the pharmacy. E-prescribing is meant to reduce the risks associated with traditional prescription script writing. It is also one of the major reasons for the push for electronic medical records. By sharing medical prescription information, e-prescribing seeks to connect the patient's team of healthcare providers to facilitate knowledgeable decision making.
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Apache cTAKES: clinical Text Analysis and Knowledge Extraction System is an open-source Natural Language Processing (NLP) system that extracts clinical information from electronic health record unstructured text. It processes clinical notes, identifying types of clinical named entities — drugs, diseases/disorders, signs/symptoms, anatomical sites and procedures. Each named entity has attributes for the text span, the ontology mapping code, context, and negated/not negated.
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, abbreviated the HITECH Act, was enacted under Title XIII of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Under the HITECH Act, the United States Department of Health and Human Services resolved to spend $25.9 billion to promote and expand the adoption of health information technology. The Washington Post reported the inclusion of "as much as $36.5 billion in spending to create a nationwide network of electronic health records." At the time it was enacted, it was considered "the most important piece of health care legislation to be passed in the last 20 to 30 years" and the "foundation for health care reform."
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GoodRx Holdings, Inc. is an American healthcare company that operates a telemedicine platform and free-to-use website and mobile app that track prescription drug prices in the United States and provide drug coupons for discounts on medications. GoodRx checks drug prices at more than seventy-five thousand pharmacies in the United States. The platform allows individuals to consult with a doctor online and obtain a prescription for certain types of medications at a cost of US$20, regardless of insurance status. Medical testing services, which vary in price, are also offered through the platform.
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[[File:Kerr & Reynolds medical System (1977).jpg|thumb|An early pharmacy management system from 1977]] The pharmacy management system, also known as the pharmacy information system, is a system that stores data and enables functionality that organizes and maintains the medication use process within pharmacies.
RXNT is an American privately held healthcare software technology company. The company provides ambulatory practices, hospitals, medical billers, and other healthcare professionals with digital health tools. The company was created in 1999, as a standalone e-prescribing system.