Background: Trigger tools are an important development in the identification and reduction of adverse drug events (ADEs). Most previously published triggers are simple, consisting of one or two conditions. Simple logic may lead to alerts for conditions not caused by a drug or already treated by the provider.
Methods: We created a knowledge-encoding tool to develop outpatient ADE triggers to more specifically identify harm caused by a drug and which require further clinical intervention. The tool presented the user with data on similar triggers from the literature and a series of fields to facilitate the creation of algorithms based on epidemiological principles.
Results: Using this tool, we created 23 triggers that addressed 55 high-harm outpatient drugs and ADEs.
Conclusion: Informatics tools can facilitate the design of clinically rich triggers. More investigation is needed to determine whether the performance characteristics of clinically rich triggers are better than those of simple triggers.