About The Medication Safety Board

In 1997, the non-profit Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) established a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary, Med-ERRS, Inc., in response to a growing need within the pharmaceutical industry to develop trademarks and packaging and labeling that minimize the potential for medication errors.

In 2019, ISMP made the strategic decision to move away from the evaluation of proposed pharmaceutical trademarks to focus entirely on the critically important core activities of improving safe medication use and preventing medication errors. As part of that decision, Med-ERRS was discontinued as a for-profit subsidiary of ISMP and The Medication Safety Board was formed in its place to continue providing the pharmaceutical industry with packaging and labeling design, technology assessments, safety consulting, and other services.

As a wholly-owned for-profit subsidiary of ISMP, The Medication Safety Board is founded on a heritage of expertise in medication safety. Our relationship with our parent company gives us an industry advantage, enabling us to apply their breadth and depth of medication safety knowledge, along with our medication safety experience, to the services we provide to our clients.

The Medication Safety Board staff consists of healthcare professionals with experience in acute and ambulatory care settings. We understand the real-life situations that occur when products are used in the healthcare environment. We also maintain a network of providers who work with us under a non-disclosure agreement to assure confidentiality when they are involved in our work. This enables us to integrate our knowledge and experience with the input of practicing clinicians in the field and allows us to systematically analyze package labeling and technology to provide clients with an understanding of their product’s risks related to medication errors.

There are many applications for our services. Depending on the stage of a product’s development, our capabilities have benefited clients in areas including:

• Assistance navigating medication error-related problems or potential issues, both in pre-marketing and post-marketing phases
• Screening new products prior to launch to ensure safe package and label design
• Designing new product container labeling for safety and to meet current standards and regulatory requirements, including those from USP and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as other regulatory authorities throughout the world
• Revising labeling and packaging after reports of medication errors
• Assessing and advising on medication/medical device or technology interfaces
• Conducting professional advisory boards to provide input on product-related medication safety concerns
• Designing and presenting educational programs for healthcare industry professionals who want to learn more about medication safety and medication error prevention