I’m sure you’re all familiar with USP <797> requirements for ceilings, wall, and floors in a pharmacy cleanroom, a.k.a. IV room. According to the current chapter: The surfaces of ceilings, walls, floors, fixtures, shelving, counters, and cabinets in the buffer area shall be smooth, impervious, free from cracks and crevices, and nonshedding, thereby promoting cleanability and … Read more
The Evolve line of compressor-free, medical grade refrigerators* are quite impressive. Powered by SilverCoreâ„¢ Technology, they have no compressor. And because they have no compressor, they have no mechanical parts, run quiet, use less electricity, and generate less heat. The system “absorbs heat energy from the storage cabinet using a non-toxic, non-hazardous refrigerant embedded in the walls. … Read more
Here’s an interesting article from the January 13 issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR): Digital Pills To Measure Opioid Ingestion Patterns In Emergency Department Patients With Acute Fracture Pain: A Pilot Study (1) A group of researchers out of Boston utilized digital pills (eTectRx, Newbury, FL, USA) to observe the ingestion patterns … Read more
Needle sticks happen. I’ve actually stuck myself a few times during my career while compounding in the IV room. Fortunately for me, it never involved anything hazardous. Still, it was a pain. No pun intended. Over the years a lot of attention has been given to methods for preventing needle sticks in healthcare, ranging from things … Read more
This year’s ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting was held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana on December 6 through December 10, 2015. For many, the Midyear Meeting is about the latest in clinical advances, but for me, it’s an opportunity to see all the new pharmacy automation and technology. And the … Read more
Acute care pharmacies generate a lot of pharmaceutical waste, and it’s not always clear what you should do with it. Yesterday I came across The Cactus Smart Sink while roaming through the exhibit hall at ASHP Midyear. The Smart Sink is a pharmaceutical waste disposal container that renders its contents “unrecoverable, non-retrievable and unusable”. Some key features … Read more
This was all over the web yesterday, so I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, but this is huge. 3D printing is one of those technologies that has the potential to disrupt just about every industry it touches. It’s not often that you can say that. The most recent technologies that I can think of that had that kind of impact was the explosion of smartphones and tablets, which are now ubiquitous across every industry you can imagine.
I’ve recently had conversations with several companies outside the U.S. developing robotic technology for the i.v. room. One of those systems is the Kiro Oncology System. Check the video below. A couple of things worth noting: The system uses dual robotic arms during the compounding process. This is something that is important for the next … Read more
Over the years I’ve had a lot of ideas, some good and some not. When an idea comes to me, I typically record it in a notebook that I have sitting on my desk. Occasionally I return to the notebook and review the ideas to see how many of the ideas still have merit. Sometimes an idea has become outdated, and rarely an idea will have materialized as a product of similar design built by a company. And then there’s a group of ideas and concepts that still hold value but haven’t been seen in the market.
Today I was rummaging through some of my old ideas. One of them from 2010 caught my attention. In 2010 I thought it would be cool if someone could use technology to analyze the IV fluid being administered to a patient in real-time. Basically, such a system would prevent the wrong IV medication from being hung on a patient, thus preventing a medication error.
I briefly mentioned the Intelliport Medication System from BD in a previous post. The technology and potential use cases are impressive. The BD Intelliport System offers: Drug and concentration information is presented to the user via audio and visual feedback. The system pulls information from the bar code on the syringe as it’s inserted into … Read more