Key Points
- Smart pump technology can protect against medical mix-up, accidental overdose, and adverse drug reactions
- Its functions include automatic dose dispensing, dose and speed controls, error alerts and locks, and data tracking
Every year, the pharmacy industry sees a product introduced that becomes the year's hottest development. This year it's the
"smart pump." In Torrance, Calif., the Little Company of Mary Hospital is using it to help make human error less likely.
No hospital is completely without incidents of medical mix-up, accidental overdose, and adverse drug reaction, but their frequency
is difficult to track. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies has indicated that more than 7,000 deaths
per year are due to medication errors alone. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the number of serious drug
mistakes — along with the number of deaths associated with adverse drug events — more than doubled from 1998 to 2005. A study
published this past spring by the National Initiative for Children's Healthcare Quality showed that roughly one in 15 hospitalized
children is harmed by medicine mix-ups, accidental overdoses and bad drug reactions. That amounts to 7.3 percent of hospitalized
children, or 540,000 children each year.
The need to address the causes of these events has become increasingly evident to the public and healthcare providers in recent
years. In one approach to the problem, technology, combined with a strong commitment to patient safety, is helping to make
such occurrences not only detectable, but preventable.
Over the past year, the drive to achieve increased patient safety has prompted Torrance's Little Company of Mary Hospital
to purchase technology that facilitated the construction a state-of-the-art pharmacy computer system. "The bottom line is that people want to know they're going to be safe when they come to a hospital," said Michael Hunn, the
hospital's chief executive. "These technologies and this investment demonstrate our commitment to doing all we can to keep
our community safe."
"In the past, errors made were often undetected, and what's really great about this technology is that for the first time
we're not only able to prevent, but determine and catch them," said Diane Bassett, spokeswoman for the hospital.
The system, estimated by the hospital to be worth approximately $2.5 million, includes some of the latest technology, such
as the smart pump manufactured by Hospira, which prevents nurses from programming incorrect dosages into intravenous machines.
The system also includes a medication dispenser and a new bar-coding system, both of which are manufactured by Innovation.
The machine in the pharmacy at Little Company of Mary stores 100 of the medications filled most often by the hospital's pharmacy.
When the medications arrive, they are scanned, then placed in the machine and sorted into the correct drawer. It's all done
with very little human handling.
The hospital is also the only one in the South Bay area to provide protection to patients throughout the entire hospital who
receive their drugs intravenously, according to hospital officials. Nurses scan the drug's bar code at the pump to ensure
that the correct drug is being provided. The pump is programmed for dosage and speed of intravenous delivery according to
calculations based on the patient's body weight and other factors.
Muno Bholat, PhD,director of pharmacy services, Little Company of Mary
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The hospital went so far as to name its robot Gemma, after the Catholic patron saint of pharmacists, Gemma Galgani, the daughter
of a 19th-century pharmacist, said Muno Bholat, PhD, director of pharmacy services at the Little Company of Mary. If the pump's
computer senses a possible error in programming it creates an alert, and the drug will not be dispensed until the parameters
have been reconfirmed by the nurse. If the dosage or speed of release falls outside certain thresholds deemed "hard limits,"
an override will not be allowed and the drug will not be dispensed until the parameters are corrected. These safety checks
apply to both patient-controlled systems and direct infusion. Hospital personnel are confident that errors can be better prevented
as a result of this technology. And when pharmacists and nurses are more confident and less stressed, it will lead to better
patient care and happier employees, Bholat said.
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