3 Utility of Free Web Based Software for Identifying Potentially Teratogenic Medicines In Pregnancy

Abstract

Aim & Objective: To study and validate the clinical utility of free web-based software in picking up
potentially and clearly harmful prescribed medicines with reference to FDA category.Materials and
Methods: The present observational, cross-sectional, prospective, web-based prescription audit study
was carried over a period of one year in a tertiary care teaching hospital. A total of 500 such prescriptions
prescribed to pregnant women coming for routine antenatal checkup, irrespective of month of gestation,
from any socioeconomic/ socio-demographic background were collected for one-point analysis. The analysis
was carried out to evaluate specificity, sensitivity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value.
Results: A total number of 1588 drugs were prescribed for 500 prescriptions studied with a mean of 3.17.
Web-based free software picked up 1383 (87.09%) drugs, while rest 205 (12.91%) drugs were not picked
up by the software. Potential teratogenic effect picked up by the software included 468 (29.48%) drugs.
The sensitivity of software with reference to four textbooks varied from 70.76% to 60.32%, specificity
99.04% to 97.18%, positive predictive 98.29 to 94.87% and negative predictive value from 74.10% to
73.92%.Conclusion: Validation of drugs picked-up by the software as potential teratogenic was suboptimal
as per sensitivity, specificity and accuracy were concerned.