EAPOC stands for the Evidence at the Point-of-Care System. This is a chronic disease management computerized decision support system designed to optimize asthma and COPD care according to latest evidence-based guidelines.
It starts with an online patient questionnaire that can be completed by patients on any device (e.g. on their smartphone while awaiting their prescription in the pharmacy). Alternatively, a pharmacy team member can complete a short version of the questionnaire directly with the patient, through the web-based pharmacist portal. This information is instantaneously processed against the latest asthma or COPD guidelines, and pharmacists receive recommendations on how to optimize that individual patient’s care according to best evidence, within the pharmacist portal. Patients are also invited to sign up for the asthma or COPD patient portal, where they can access educational content and can view their personalized action plan, once it is approved by their pharmacist.
EAPOC was designed by a team at the University of Toronto, including diverse real-world pharmacists, with the time constraints of the busy community pharmacy in mind. It can be used by any pharmacy team member, though pharmacists (and/or pharmacy students) usually complete the final decision support steps, which often involve medication recommendations.
Patients with asthma or COPD must be at least 16 years old to use the system.
Like in many chronic diseases, large gaps between best evidence and actual care have been identified in asthma and COPD. EAPOC was designed to help bridge the main evidence-to-practice gaps which are the major causes of poor asthma and COPD control, impaired quality of life, and poor health outcomes. These include:
EAPOC was developed by clinicians and scientists at the University of Toronto and other centers around Canada, over a more than a decade of research. Each part of the system was systematically designed, built, and tested with user input for workflow integration and user interface optimization. Over 20 peer-reviewed publications support various aspects of EAPOC, including clinical trials in busy, real-world clinics and pharmacies demonstrating significant improvements in quality of care across the main known evidence-to-practice gaps.
It’s quick! Once they have used it a few times, pharmacists typically require only 5-7 minutes to complete the EAPOC decision support. This includes identifying disease control level, optimizing medications accordingly, and generating a personalized action plan for a patient. This compares to over 30 minutes for the same workflows if completed manually (and in most cases, pharmacists do not have the resources or training to complete tasks such as creating a personalized action plan).
For added efficiency, EAPOC also automatically creates a comprehensive summary letter and prescription change request to be sent to the patient’s prescriber (or a pharmacist prescription and physician summary letter only, if the pharmacist chooses to adjust medications themselves). The system also generates a documentation summary of all interactions that can be used for billing and regulatory purposes.
Using EAPOC to objectively measure asthma or COPD control level, optimize medications according to guidelines, and create a personalized action plan for the patient meets and exceeds requirements for billable pharmacy services in most provinces, allowing pharmacists not only to make fundamental contributions to their patients’ chronic disease care, but also to be remunerated for this effort.
All personal health information is kept private and secure, and is handled in accordance with provincial personal health information protection laws. For a more detailed description of our privacy practices, please see our Privacy Notice.
No, the system is completely free to use for patients! Our goal is to improve asthma and COPD care without introducing any financial barriers for patients.
EAPOC is accessible to the pharmacy team through a standalone web portal and is deployable within almost any pharmacy setting. Please Contact Us for more information about how your pharmacy can be onboarded.
After your pharmacy has launched EAPOC, any patient can be invited to simply fill the patient questionnaire through a unique URL provided by the EAPOC team (this can be accessed through the pharmacy’s website, a scannable QR code on EAPOC posters or cards, or can be directly sent to patients by email or text message through the pharmacy portal). Patients are also automatically invited to create an account in the Patient Portal.
Absolutely. Our client support team will be pleased to provide an EAPOC demo. Click here to set up an appointment.
You can contact our team for any questions or feedback through our Contact Us form.