Use of ' - ' in Drug Dosage Field of Vision Therapy - Add Screen

Cegedim has been made aware of a potential clinical safety risk relating to the use of the hyphen (-) character within the drug dosage field of the Vision Therapy - Add screen. When the hyphen character is entered with a space on either side of the hyphen included (i.e. ' - ‘) it is automatically expanded to the word 'OR'. This presents a risk to patient safety that may have implications for patient care. The consequences would include a patient potentially taking an unintended dosage of an issued prescribed therapy item. For example, the intended dose may be “Use 1 TO 8 sachets daily” but if entered as “Use 1 – 8 sachets daily” this is expanded to “Use 1 OR 8 sachets daily”.

A development fix has been identified that fully resolves this issue and will be implemented in a forthcoming release of Vision software. In the meantime, we advise not to enter the hyphen character with spaces on either side (i.e. ' - ‘) into the drug dosage field but instead use of either of the following two recommended options that will NOT result in expansion to the word ‘OR’ and therefore provide interim mitigation against the patient safety risk: 

1) (preferred) Use the word 'TO' when entering Dosage:

2) Use the hyphen character without spaces when entering Dosage:

Note that this issue is believed to be longstanding and not specific to any particular release version. It has been discovered in-house at Vision as a result of testing and it is understood that no Helpdesk calls or notifications from users have ever been received highlighting this issue.