When someone enters hospital for examination or treatment, is given a doctor’s prescription, receives medication from a pharmacist or has his drugs administered by a nurse, he assumes that his health and welfare will benefit from this medical intervention. But the effectiveness of available therapies should also be viewed from the perspective of potentially negative consequences: adverse drug events (ADE). ADEs endanger patients’ safety and increase hospital costs, making reduction of preventable ADEs a crucial and challenging Public Health issue.

This book presents papers from the workshop 'Patient Safety through Intelligent Procedures in medication' focusing on the following topics:

The identification of ADE and medication errors in hospital settings

The role of human and organisational factors on ADE and medication errors

Information and Communication Technologies to prevent or correct ADEs and medication errors.

The papers in this book are the work of active scientific experts in the field and confront ideas and experiences arising worldwide, and in particular from several EU projects directed at resolving ADE problems. Here is an opportunity to find common ways for solving shared difficulties and make improvements happen.