An investigation into the types of drug related problems that can and cannot be identified by commercial medication review software

A commercially used expert system using multiple-classification ripple-down rules applied to the domain of pharmacist-conducted home medicines re-view was examined. The system was capable of detecting a wide range of po-tential drug-related problems. The system identified the same problems as pharmacists in many of the cases. Problems identified by pharmacists but not by the system may be related to missing information or information outside the domain model. Problems identified by the system but not by pharmacists may be associated with system consistency and perhaps human oversight or human selective prioritization. Problems identified by the system were considered rele-vant even though the system identified a larger number of problems than human counterparts.