Enhancing Pharmacy Practice: Role of Clinical Decision Support System in Mitigating Drug-related Problems

Drug-related problems (DRPs) significantly impact patients’ medication therapy outcomes. These include adverse drug reactions, ineffective drug therapy, excessive or sub-therapeutic drug dosage, development of drug resistance, drug–drug interactions, medication errors, and medication non-adherence. A clinical decision support system (CDSS) helps mitigate DRPs by providing clinical suggestions and reminders that enable decision-making by pharmacists and clinicians toward improving the overall well-being of patients. CDSS, associated with pharmacy services, enable pharmacists to consider substitutes for specific medications and address specific health problems by providing medication therapy management (MTM), acute pain management and other related services. Our research focused on identifying the benefits of CDSS integration in the pharmacist workflow toward managing DRPs. We conducted a thorough search across major databases, Scopus, Embase, PubMed, and Google Scholar, to obtain appropriate articles published through November 2025 and selected articles that met the inclusion criteria. Some of the challenges in CDSS implementation identified were integration issues with existing electronic health records (EHRs), incompatibility with current workflows, costs, inadequate leadership, and poor data quality.