Ronald Monson is an educator/researcher in the Student Learning Unit at Victoria University in Melbourne, Victoria. He provides support in the areas of mathematics and computer science across the University. This has included Drug Calculations, Statistics in Business and Psychology, Engineering, Mathematics and various Software Engineering projects. His research interests centre around computation and overlap complexity theory, software design in experimental infrastructure, descriptive complexity and artificial intelligence. He received his PhD from the University of Western Australia in 2004 for the development of a prototypical computer-aided learning system along with a “K-SAT algorithm” in theoretical computer science. In April of 2009 he left academia for 2 years in search of academic freedom.
The Drugulator - A New Method for Performing Dosage Calculations
Ronald Christopher Monson
Abstract
the administration stage of a patient's medical management. In this method users first construct a dosage's mathematical formulation from within the Drugulator's structured interface. This formulation is then evaluated by sending it to an attached computational backend that then returns any constituent calculations along with the patient's final dose. This process of Formulaic and Computationally-Aided Dosing (FCAD), and in particular, the single-interface Drugulator implementation described here, makes it practical to readily automate a wide range of dosage calculations at the point of care. This practicality also enables further automation through a progressive integration with existing medical systems. Finally, we argue that the principle underpinning the deployment of a single interface can also be used to improve the usability of those computer provider order entry systems that include clinical decision support (CPOEcds).
Keywords
Drug Dosage Calculations; Medication Errors; Educational Technology; Algorithms; Automation; Systems Integration