In 1994, Sittig and Stead wrote a landmark article on Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) [1] . Much has changed in the field in the past ten years plus. The bibliography on this website is intended as a sequel to the Sittig and Stead paper. We have not included articles published before 1994, as Sittig and Stead’s “State of the Art” summarized the literature to that point nicely.

The current readings have been selected specifically for those involved in implementation of systems, clinicians, administrators and IT professionals including implementation support staff. It is designed to give these individuals a streamlined overview of the CPOE literature. We hope to offer a “jump-start” for reading in the area, and provide a framework for the reader’s own ideas and notes.

You can search the bibliography by using the form below. The entire bibliography is also available in PDF here.

Methods:

The citation search strategy included several approaches. Electronic database searches were conducted in September 2005 for dates 1993 through 2005 including Ovid MEDLINE, CINAHL, BIOSIS, and all EBM reviews (which includes the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, the American College of Physicians [ACP] Journal Club, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews, and Effects and the Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials). This search was not limited to peer-reviewed journals and did not reject letters or editorials, a priori, since many such responses contain insight, for example the debate surrounding the JAMA article on CPOE and error [2]. This does introduce an element of subjectivity to article selection but errs on the side of inclusion rather than exclusion. This search was, however, limited to English language articles.

For electronic searches the following medical subject headings (MeSH) terms were used, in multiple combinations:

• computer systems
• medication systems
• clinicial pharmacy information systems
• point-of-care systems
• drug therapy, computer assisted
• medication errors
• user-computer interface
• computer user training
• attitude to computers
• diffusion of innovation

These keywords were included in the search:

• order entry
• computer$ physician$
• $poe
• computer$ prescribe$

(where “$” denotes a “wildcard” character(s))

Bibliographies of documents in the search sets were reviewed for possible additions. In addition, Web-of-Science (Thomson) was searched for references to some included articles.

1. Sittig DF, Stead WW. Computer-Based Physician Order Entry: The State of the Art. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 1994 ;1 (2):108-23.
2. Koppel R, Metlay JP, Cohen A, Abaluck B, Localio AR, Kimmel SE, et al. Role of Computerized Physician Order Entry Systems in Facilitating Medication Errors. JAMA 2005 ;293 (10):1197-203.

Last Updated: October 23, 2007