Singapore
The glitch in the GPConnect computer system saw more than 830 patients receive medicine labelled with the wrong dosage instructions.
People waiting for their prescriptions. (File photo: TODAY)
SINGAPORE: The cause of the IT glitch resulting in more than 830 patients receiving medicine labelled with wrong dosage instructions has been traced to an IT vendor for the GPConnect computer system, Senior Minister of State for Health Lam Pin Min revealed on Monday (Oct 1).
Speaking in Parliament, he said investigations revealed that the IT vendor had made some changes to the application code for the system, which is run by public healthcare IT agency Integrated Health Information System (IHiS).
The glitch followed a system upgrade by the vendor implemented on Sep 1, which saw some GP clinics having problems where medication labels were printed incorrectly. Dr Lam said, while the correct medication and total quantity of medication were correctly dispensed, the system printed the wrong unit of measurement on the label.
Several clinics were aware of the error and manually corrected the dosage instruction on the label. Once notified, IHiS investigated the incident and informed all infected clinics from Sep 2, said Dr Lam.
IHiS has been monitoring the situation, and no further errors have been reported since Sep 3, he added. “Affected patients were monitored by the clinics, and to date, there have not been any reports of adverse effects,” he said.
Dr Lam explained that the changes made by the IT vendor to the application code resulted in the incorrect medication labels being printed. These changes were unrelated to the system upgrade.
“Hence, the user acceptance tests designed to evaluate the upgrade did not pick up the error,” he said. “The vendor also did not report any errors from any other tests done.
He said that since the incident, additional rounds of testing have been conducted to ensure that existing functions within GPConnect are working as designed. The unit of measurement function is also being enhanced to prevent future errors.
In response to a supplementary question from MP Intan Azura Mokhtar, who suggested that new technologies or new security measures could be applied to ensure the security of such data, Dr Lam said that this particular incident was a result of human error, and there will be measures to ensure such errors can be picked up.
However, he noted that MOH would “seriously look” into her suggestion on new technologies.
