Data quality enters Wisconsin's fight against opioid addiction

Madison, Wis. (8 February 2017)--Data quality is making its mark in the fight against opioid addiction, via Wisconsin's new enhanced Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (ePDMP), which went live on January 17, 2017.

Using data quality software from MIOsoft Corporation, the Wisconsin ePDMP has extended functionality that provides added capabilities for healthcare practitioners, as well as government and law enforcement agencies, in efforts to reduce opioid addiction.

"Reducing opioid addiction and other prescription drug abuse is saving lives, and we're extremely proud that our MIOvantage software is playing a key role in the important ePDMP effort," said Jordan Barrette, MIOsoft's chief operating officer.

The ePDMP is a centralized, statewide database containing information about the controlled substances—specifically, schedule II through V drugs—that have been dispensed in Wisconsin. It contains more than 45 million prescription records, primarily from pharmacies, though healthcare practitioners that dispense drugs directly are also required to submit their data to the ePDMP.

Using the ePDMP, healthcare practitioners are able to provide more informed patient care: the ePDMP provides a way for healthcare providers to evaluate a patient's complete history of controlled substance prescriptions in Wisconsin before writing a new prescription.

"The enhanced Prescription Drug Monitoring Program is a central hub in the continuing fight against prescription drug abuse in Wisconsin," said Wisconsin governor Scott Walker in a Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services press release. "It further allows pharmacies, healthcare professionals, law enforcement agencies, and public health officials to work together to reduce the misuse, abuse and diversion of prescribed controlled substance drugs."

Amid growing recognition of prescription drug abuse as a nationwide crisis, Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) have been widely adopted in the United States. Wisconsin's new ePDMP will provide additional tools and capabilities beyond those available in the previous Wisconsin PDMP.

One of those additional capabilities is enhanced data quality, which is key to a PDMP's operation.

A PDMP's effectiveness rests on its ability to provide complete and accurate controlled substance prescription histories for individuals. Data quality problems, however, are present in many large data sets, including the ePDMP's.

Data quality problems can complicate any efforts to bring together data about the same person: for instance, a person might use different variations of their name at different times, or a person's information might be misspelled during data entry. As a result, records about the same person each contain slightly different data.

Data-driven projects cannot produce reliable results if they are forced to use unreliable data. With low data quality, companies are underinformed or, in the worst case, misinformed as they make critical decisions.

Data quality problems can also arise when data is missing from a record, or when data is present but invalid.

MIOvantage data quality software was introduced to help the ePDMP overcome these types of problems, so that the ePDMP can locate records about the same individual while ensuring that all available information is as accurate and complete as possible.

“When the data is changing over time, that adds an extra dimension to any data quality problem, and in the ePDMP the data changes every day when new data is uploaded,” said Barrette. “At MIOsoft, we’ve put a lot of R&D into our relationship discovery technology, which is what makes it possible for MIOvantage to be effective at solving data quality problems like those facing the ePDMP.”

The ePDMP and its improved capabilities, including MIOvantage data quality, completely replace Wisconsin's original PDMP, which was deployed in June 2013. Wisconsin’s ePDMP is administered by the Wisconsin Department of Safety and Professional Services.

About MIOsoft Corporation

MIOsoft provides industry-leading data quality and big data analytics with its MIOvantage software. A deep commitment to customer success guides MIOsoft in ensuring that MIOvantage provides real, practical solutions to the full range of enterprise big data challenges. Companies worldwide have used MIOsoft software to overcome obstacles and gain data-backed insight.

Founded in 1998, MIOsoft (www.miosoft.com) is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, with a global presence through MIOsoft Deutschland GmbH in Hamburg, Germany, and MIOsoft (Beijing) Corporation in Beijing, China.

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