Sig IQ Saves Prescribers from an Eternity of Mouse Clicks

It’s three or four clicks for each prescription a prescriber might want to renew for a patient. An “eternity of clicks” is overstating it, but those clicks add up.

Before Sig IQ, the free-text field for patient directions (Sig) would require manual translation into a clinically validated, structured format for the electronic health record (EHR) platform.

Sig IQ automates this translation work, saving keystrokes and clicks. Discrete elements are pre-populated within the enabled EHR and interpreted in every system in the same way.

The result is a more streamlined and efficient e-prescribing workflow.

Significant Impact on Clinical Review

Sig IQ was originally developed to enhance Medication History for Reconciliation, which gives prescribers access to 12 months of patient prescription data in acute and ambulatory settings.

A little over half of all Medication History Sigs in 2023 were translated from free text to structured Sig format by Sig IQ, and with 2.97 billion medication histories delivered that year alone, Sig IQ is already making a significant and immediate impact on clinical review across the network.

The key takeaway here is that Medication History with Sig IQ has enabled more prescribers and EHRs to send structured Sigs to pharmacies than ever before.

Closing the Sig Loop for Prescribers

But all bets are off—or at least they were—when it comes to prescription renewals.

Prescription renewals often come back from the pharmacy in unstructured free-text format, rather than in a structured format, which brings us to all the keystrokes and clicks it takes for a prescriber to renew a single prescription.

With that in mind, not only did we continue to make Medication History responses more complete and easier to navigate with the addition of Sig IQ, but we expanded the use of Sig IQ by adding structured Sigs to RxRenewal Requests sent to prescribers by pharmacies.

• Since October 2023—the month Sig IQ for RxRenewals first became available for early adopters—Sig IQ has analyzed and improved 1.4 million RxRenewal Request transactions, saving prescribers the time and effort of manual translation.

Quality Sigs are so important: One in 10 e-prescriptions still don’t cut it in terms of Sig—even though it’s “one of the most quality-sensitive components of a prescription order,” per this study published in the Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy. So, we built Sig IQ with trust and accuracy in mind, and that includes pharmacist review.

Every Sig enabled with Sig IQ undergoes pharmacist review to verify that the codified information is accurate. This includes dose, dosage form, route (and site) of administration, frequency, duration and maximum dose restrictions.

With Sig IQ, we’ve closed the loop for prescribers, and we’re helping to ensure that high-quality Sigs flow between the pharmacy and prescribers.