Performance Assessment of Software to Detect and Assist Prescribers with Antimicrobial Drug Interactions: Are all of them Created Equal?

Background: Detecting and managing antimicrobial drug interactions (ADIs) is one of the facets of prudent antimicrobial prescribing. Our aim is to compare the capability of several electronic drug-drug interaction (DDI) checkers to detect and report ADIs.

Methods: Six electronic DDI checking platforms were evaluated: Drugs.com^®, Medscape^®, Epocrates^®, Medimecum^®, iDoctus^®, and Guía IF^®. Lexicomp^® Drug Interactions was selected as the gold standard. Ten ADIs addressing different mechanisms were evaluated with every electronic DDI checker. For each ADI, we assessed five dimensions and calculated an overall performance score (maximum possible score: 10 points). The explored dimensions were sensitivity (capability to detect ADI), clinical effect (type and severity), mechanism of interaction, recommended action(s), and documentation (quality of evidence and availability of references).

Results: The electronic DDI checkers did not detect a significant proportion of the ADI assessed. The overall performance score ranged between 4.4 (Medimecum) and 8.8 (Drugs.com). Drugs.com was the highest ranked platform in four out of five dimensions (sensitivity, effect, mechanism, and recommended action).

Conclusions: There is significant variability in the performance of the available platforms in detecting and assessing ADI. Although some ADI checkers have proven to be very accurate, others missed almost half of the explored interactions.