Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2008, $399,970)
Since the beginning of FY 2002, Congress has appropriated funding to the U. S. Department of Justice to support the Harold Rogers Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. Prescription drug monitoring programs enhance the capacity of regulatory and law enforcement agencies to collect and analyze controlled substance prescription data through a centralized database administered by an authorized state agency. These programs are designed to help prevent and detect the diversion and abuse of pharmaceutical controlled substances, particularly at the retail level where no other automated information collection system exists.
States that have implemented prescription drug monitoring programs have the capability of collecting and analyzing prescription data much more efficiently than states without such programs where the collection of prescription information requires the manual review of pharmacy files which is a very time consuming and invasive process. The increased efficiency of prescription drug monitoring programs allows for the early detection of abuse trends and possible sources of diversion.
Indiana Professional Licensing Agency was selected for an enhancement grant for its Indiana Scheduled Prescription Electronic Collection and Tracking (INSPECT) program. The Indiana Professional Licensing Agency will address software-system issues and explore the possibility of automating the data upload process for the state's 1,700 licensed pharmacies. An automated system will also help ensure compliance with data upload guidelines and create an audit trail. Currently, the system does not identify incomplete submissions and completely rejects data submissions with errors without tracking whether or not the data file was ever resubmitted.
The INSPECT program will also upgrade the system to allow automated password resets, as the current manual reset is very labor intensive. Further, automation will make the system more effective, which is particularly needed as the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency attempts to expand usage over time from nearly 3,500 users to a projected 40,000 plus users.
The INSPECT program currently contains an inadequate reporting function that does not allow staff to customize data searches. They will obtain ad-hoc reporting and querying capabilities to marry with their geographic information system software in order to create a geographic analysis tool to map out drug hotspots across the state. Data modeling software will also allow them to create geographic forecasting models.
Indiana Professional Licensing Agency will also launch a multifaceted stakeholder awareness campaign to include informational gatherings, training workshops, and the development of training and marketing materials. Furthermore, the Indiana Professional Licensing Agency wishes to explore building partnerships with other organizations, including state agencies, nonprofit organizations and research institutes, and will attend professional conferences in order to meet with peers and ensure they are current on industry trends.
CA/NCF