Health Information Systems for Medication Safety in Primary Care: From Clinical Decision Support to Connected Devices

Medication errors and adverse drug events are a leading and largely preventable threat to patient safety and a substantial burden on health systems, and most prescribing, dispensing, and long term medication management now take place in primary and ambulatory care. This narrative review examines how health information systems and communication technologies, the digital tools, connected devices, and data practices that capture, share, and act on medication information, support medication safety in primary care. Drawing on full text studies from a PubMed search covering 2021 to 2026 and focused on primary and ambulatory settings, it describes converging approaches: clinical decision support and prescribing analytics, electronic records and routinely collected data for pharmacovigilance, patient facing portals and applications, connected devices and remote monitoring for error prevention, and digital support for medication reconciliation across care transitions. Benefit depends less on the technology than on interoperability, integration into clinical workflow, the engagement of clinicians and patients, and whether interventions are sustained. Polypharmacy and high-risk prescribing recur as priority targets, with antimicrobial stewardship as one illustrative example rather than the review’s central concern. Drivers and barriers, a protocol-heavy evidence base, interoperability and equity, and implications for information systems and public health are discussed.