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Safer prescribing for children: The BNFC and Dosium’s award-winning blueprint

This year marks a significant milestone for BNF for Children (BNFC), as it celebrates 20 years of providing essential, independent, and evidence-based guidance for prescribing for children. Prescribing for children is intrinsically complex. Weight-based calculations, age-related dosing and indication-specific nuances are frequent sources of error. While digital prescribing systems have been widely adopted, many still act as mere electronic order forms, failing to provide the sophisticated intelligence needed to actively guide safe dosing decisions. This is where Dosium and BNFC are making a demonstrable difference.

A new approach to paediatric safety

Dosium’s Touchdose solution tackles medication errors at their source, by embedding authoritative, evidence-based content directly into a clinician’s workflow. It bypasses the common pitfalls of other systems, such as alert fatigue, by offering a proactive, ‘right first time’ approach to prescribing. The system’s integration with BNFC allows it to automatically perform precise, patient-specific dose calculations based on a child’s age, weight, and clinical indication. This automation not only saves valuable time but, more importantly, eliminates the risk of human calculation and transcription errors that can have devastating consequences. With a real-time link to BNFC content, the system ensures up-to-date dosing information at the point of prescribing.

The development of this technology was driven by a deep understanding of the problem. Research by Nicholas Appelbaum, CEO and Co-Founder of Dosium, during his PhD at Imperial College London, revealed sobering statistics from simulated paediatric resuscitation scenarios. In these simulations, a medication error occurred in almost 30% of drug administrations, with 40% of these errors classified as moderate or severe. Dosium’s solution was designed to directly combat this hidden “iceberg” of harm.

A partnership recognised for patient safety excellence

The success of Dosium’s approach is not just a theoretical concept; it has been validated in a real-world clinical setting. Touchdose is deployed in high-risk paediatric settings across West London Children’s Healthcare. An evaluation of its use at St Mary’s Hospital demonstrated a remarkable 83% reduction in prescribing errors, with error rates plummeting from 7.1% to 1.2% when the tool was used. This is a powerful testament to how a seamless integration of trusted content can transform patient care.

This work was recently recognised as a finalist at the HSJ Patient Safety Awards 2025 in the “Safety improvement through technology” category. This commendation highlights the importance of partnerships between health technology companies and healthcare organisations and underscores the vital role of BNFC as the definitive standard for safe paediatric prescribing. The award nomination is a direct reflection of the significant, measurable impact that Dosium’s system has had on patient safety.

A legacy of safe practice

BNFC’s integration into a cutting-edge platform like Dosium’s Touchdose shows the formulary’s enduring and evolving relevance. By making this first choice for concise medicines information for children actionable at the point of care, BNFC continues to serve as a foundational element in improving patient outcomes and ensuring that every child receives the safest, most accurate medication possible.