Electronic prescription as a self-service

Note: this article was our April Fools’ Day prank. Please don’t take it seriously.

Atostek has released a self-service version “MyDope” of its electronic prescription which enables patients to prescribe their own medicines.

MyDope is a browser-based cloud service that can be used with computers or mobile appliances. Anybody with a valid identity number and netbank access codes is eligible to use the service.

– A patient signs in to the service and fills a short application form on-line. If necessary, the service might ask a few simple questions and then it decides in a few seconds whether the prescription can be granted or not. We expect more than 90% of the applications to pass, says Dr. Risto Pitkänen, VP of Marketing at Atostek.

– There are two main differences between MyDope and a conventional medical consultation. First, MyDope is an advanced artificial intelligence with limited medical license instead of a human doctor. Secondly, the prescriptions are limited to routine cases at least in the beginning. The artificial intelligence has access to patient’s previous prescriptions and medical history, which help to decide if the patient should pay a visit to a human doctor.

– Renewal of expired prescriptions, antibiotics, and pain killers are examples of cases which could mostly be automatised to save human doctor’s working hours. Furthermore, some patients might prefer a machine interface to a human contact, especially in cases such as contraception or erectile dysfunction medication, Dr. Pitkänen enumerates the advantages.

– Our goal is to automatise the drug distribution as well by means of walking or flying robots which are already applied in some countries, plans Dr. Pitkänen.

– There is always a chance for misuse, but very small. When electronic prescription made it difficult to forge prescriptions, pharmacies were afraid that addicts would get their illegal drugs by violent robberies instead. MyDope is a relief to this problem.

– The beta version of the MyDope service is now open at Atostek’s home page. Any problems, such as prescriptions given too easy, will be solved soon by the learning ability of the artificial intelligence, promises Dr. Pitkänen.

Additional information: Mr. Risto Pitkänen, Dr., tel. +358 40 576 2064