FDB (First Databank, Inc.), the leading provider of drug and medical device knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions, today announced an agreement with SoftWriters to integrate FDB’s Meducation® solution into its FrameworkLTC® pharmacy management platform to seamlessly translate prescription labels into any of nearly 30 preferred languages requested by patients.
The integration aligns with new state regulations, most recently announced in Nevada and Oregon, that require pharmacies to offer prescription labels in a language other than English at the request of the patient or caregiver. Oregon’s law went into effect this year and Nevada’s law was approved by its governor this year and will go into effect in July 2022. California’s and New York’s multilingual prescription label laws each have been on the books for several years.
“More and more state leaders are recognizing that offering prescription labels and educational materials in a patient’s preferred language can improve their health literacy and adherence to medication regimens,” said Charles Lee, MD, Senior Director of Clinical Knowledge for FDB. “SoftWriters is taking the lead in this regard by integrating FDB’s Meducation solution into its market-leading platform, which will save pharmacists time in fulfilling orders and improve patients’ understanding of their therapies, leading to better outcomes.”
Accessing Meducation’s translated prescriptions capability is simple for pharmacists using FrameworkLTC and eliminates the need to deviate from their existing fulfillment workflow. When the physician submits the prescription order, including the dosing and refill instructions, or “sig,” Meducation’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities transform the sig—which can come in one of millions of variations—into a standardized, translated format.
When using this new solution, a pharmacist simply selects the patient’s preferred language within FrameworkLTC that is powered by FDB’s Meducation API. The translation capability updates the label to the preferred language in less than a second. In addition, the image-based format provides a method to support older labeling printers that may not have built-in support for some fonts or right-to-left languages.
“Multilingual support is another example of how SoftWriters is dedicated to meeting a market need while improving our user experience through the continual optimization of our FrameworkLTC purpose-built pharmacy management platform,” said Deepika Devarajan, Vice President, Product at SoftWriters. “FDB’s robust and seamless solution is the perfect addition to our highly automated platform that we anticipate will continue to streamline pharmacist workflows and drive patient outcomes.”
Complete Patient Medication Education Solution
Meducation includes more than prescription label translation support. It is a complete patient medication education and engagement solution that can enable organizations to provide simplified, personalized medication instructions to all patients. All material is written at a 5th to 8th grade level with supporting pictograms and calendars, and is available in a range of font sizes. Beyond printed materials, a patient’s Meducation content can be accessed through a web browser, patient portal or mobile app.
“Multilingual support is an important element of our broader patient medication education solution and one we are pleased to share with more pharmacy teams across all healthcare settings, offering additional languages as they become available,” said Dr. Lee. “Not only does the near-real-time language translation save pharmacists time and help them practice more efficiently, but it also helps them better care for and communicate with and support the patient and their caregivers.”
