University researchers, led by Tatyana Shamliyan of the Minnesota School of Public Health, reviewed 12 studies conducted between 1990 and 2005 that compared the handwritten and computerized medication errors made by hospital physicians.

Medication errors -- including the prescribing of a wrong drug, ordering an inaccurate dosage, or administering a drug at the wrong time -- decreased by as much as 66 percent in hospitals that switched to a computerized physician order entry system.

Illegible handwriting and transcription errors accounted for more than 60 percent of medication errors.

"Evidence from these studies show that computerized systems can reduce mistakes, but unfortunately less than 50 percent of hospitals have implemented these systems," said Shamliyan. "There is a lot of work to be done in the future."

The review was recently published in the online journal Health Services Research.