Introduction

 Literature review: Untimely access to information at time of decision making and weak communication among health care providers are the main causes of medical errors. In addition, unavailability and lack of attention to information related to patients and drugs are the most common reasons for medication errors. So data reporting systems can support patients' safety. Manual systems, however, are not adequate to this end. In addition, CPOE has a special role at time of drug prescription to decrease medication errors. 

Conclusion: Using CPOE is a suitable approach to have access to timely information and to improve the relationships among specialists, and therefore to reduce errors. The results of our study show the necessary capabilities to design CPOE for Iranian hospitals. Patients' drug profiles and informing physicians about using drugs and patients' inactive drugs, obligatory documentation, warning ability and reminding important and effective points on treatment, creating facilities to support decisions, relationship between CPOE to other information systems, presenting educational information about prescribed and replaced drugs, using internet and treatment protocols, are some such capabilities that all affect physicians' prescription behaviors and finally lead to improvement in drug prescription process and reduction of medication errors.