Abstract:

Medication errors and adverse drug events are a leading and 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. For health services the central question is less which technology exists than how information is managed, adopted, and sustained in everyday clinical work. This narrative review examines how information management, defined as the digital tools and data practices that capture, share, and act on medication information, supports medication safety in primary care, and what this implies for health systems and public health. 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, dashboards with audit and feedback, electronic records and routinely collected data for pharmacovigilance, patient facing portals and applications, and digital support for medication reconciliation across care transitions. Benefit depends less on the technology than on organisational context, the engagement of clinicians and patients, and whether interventions are sustained. Polypharmacy and antimicrobial prescribing recur as priority targets. Drivers and barriers, a protocol-heavy evidence base, equity, and implications for practice and policy are discussed.