There is a pressing need for rigorous evaluations of: The acceptability of electronic prescribing to health professionals that: - determine aspects of decision support that are most helpful and acceptable to prescribers - explore the acceptability of alerts and warnings - investigate how these warnings could be made more useful to prescribers - consider the acceptability of different types of POE to prescribers. Economic evaluations that: - describe costs and health outcomes associated with integrated computer systems that incorporate pharmacy, laboratory and administrative data - define costs and health outcomes related to POE - explore the marginal costs and effectiveness of decision support with and without POE - evaluate the marginal costs and effectiveness of decision support with and without evidencebased guidelines - determine whether decision support enables other professional groups to effectively and safely assume roles (prescribing, diagnosing, patient information provision etc) previously occupied by physicians. Patient outcomes related to electronic prescribing that: - determine the effects of all types of electronic prescribing on health outcomes - describe the costs and health outcomes related to the provision of specialised dosing programmes for medications with a narrow safety profile for which blood concentrations can accurately, reliably and quickly be determined and that utilise a Bayesian approach to pharmacokinetics - undertake evaluations of the safety features of electronic prescribing systems and their ability to appropriately cope with patient emergencies or detect and respond to their own electrical and mechanical problems - ascertain the health outcomes and the cost effectiveness of computer generated anticoagulation therapy for both the initiation and maintenance of heparin or warfarin treatment in hospital or outpatient settings. Relative effectiveness of different types of electronic advice for different types of prescribers in a variety of settings that: - undertake comparisons of the use of warnings at the time of prescribing versus the provision of alerts after the prescription has been completed - explore the use of critiquing systems that check for alerts after prescriptions have been completed for audit and quality improvement purposes - determine the effects of decision support on junior doctors who subsequently work in paperbased organisations - evaluate the use of electronic prescribing in primary care - consider whether decision support is more beneficial for doctors with different characteristics - address what decision support material should be presented simultaneously with prescribing or what should be available by an additional step - examine electronic prescribing interventions in New Zealand - elucidate reliable indicators of the risk of an ADE - examine the effectiveness of the provision of additional clinical information with the prescribing information that is electronically checked by the warning system - consider the relative or additional benefits of POE relative to other interventions (such as unit dosing, bar coding and automated dispensing systems) that aim to reduce medication errors.