Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals responded to concerns by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) on administering contrast agents by previewing at RSNA 2007 VistaTrak, a password protected contrast media cabinet that tracks media stock using RFID labels.
Designed to help meet JCAHO regulations on safety, the cabinet can be interfaced with an electronic medical record (EMR), PACS/RIS and billing system to access patient data and monitor for allergic reactions. The monitoring system is designed to help prevent the potential risk of nephrogenic systemic fibrosis (NSF) when a patient is injected with gadolinium-containing contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The company’s MAGNEVIST (gadopentetate dimeglumine) contrast agent will be the first product to carry the RFID tag in the VistaTrak cabinet.
The cabinet is also password protected to comply with JCAHO’s requirement for contrast agent cabinets to be kept under lock and key. The cabinet is only accessible by using either a coded badge or a pin code.
Once a bottle is removed, the RFID tag inside of the cabinet reads the lot number, expiration date and other information on the label required by JCAHO. The EMR, PACS/RIS and billing system are updated when a bottle is removed from the cabinet to track the procedure and inventory. VistaTrak will not be commercially available until mid-2008.
November 2007