“Robotic IV Automation (RIVA) is a medical device developed by Intelligent Hospital Systems Inc. (IH Systems). Hospital pharmacies use RIVA to automatically and accurately prepare IV syringes and bags. By automating the preparation of IV syringes and bags, RIVA addresses the issues of safety for the patient and the pharmacy technician, efficiency and effectiveness in the pharmacy and the challenges of a changing regulatory environment. RIVA allows hospital pharmacies to compound sterile preparations in a United States Pharmacopeia (USP) 797 environment while producing admixtures in either syringes or bags. The automation of repetitive and complex tasks reduces the incidence of errors and contamination.” - The RIVA system is built on .Net 2.0 written in C# running on Windows XP Embedded OS. The system costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.2 million and uses a robotic arm to prepare IV syringes and bags behind a glass case. There are two videos on YouTube worth watching here and here. They are very similar, but offer different views of the robotic arm in action.
RIVA appears to be popular in Children’s hospitals as three of the four hospitals listed on the company’s website include Primary Children’s Medical Center of Salt Lake City, Children’s Hospital of Orange County, and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. I’ll be in Philadelphia in about a week and only live a few hours from Orange County. I wonder if I could arrange a demo. Hmmm.
