The research team behind a program aimed at reducing the overprescribing of antipsychotics and benzodiazepines in residential aged care facilities has called for the program to be made available to all Australian RACFs following findings that it led to a cessation or reduction in dosage for almost 40 per cent of residents prescribed them.

The Reducing Use of Sedatives or RedUSe intervention was developed by researchers at the University of Tasmania's Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre and uses data extraction software that automatically extracts all packed medicines from common medicine packing systems such as FredPak, Webstercare, MPS and Minfos.