B. Braun announced the availability of a new suite of essential infusion safety tools to help reduce medication errors and enhance patient safety. With the national launch of the Outlook 300 Safety Infusion System, with wireless capability, the DoseTrac Infusion Management Software and the DoseTrac Infusion Safety Analysis Service, healthcare institutions will be equipped with easy access to clinical data, and be provided with expert services to analyze that data to ensure best practices.
A 2007 Institute of Medicine publication “Preventing Medication Errors” concludes that, although there has been a great deal of scholarly activity and sizable government resources directed at determining the extent and scope of medication errors, “greater effort is needed to identify medication errors in most care settings, both to measure the extent and scope of such errors and to assess the impact of error prevention strategies.”
In an article that appeared in a BMJ (British Medical Journal) publication, Quality and Safety in Health Care (2005; 14:80-86), M. Hursch, C. Sullivan, D. Rooney, et al, discuss the importance of an integrated system to deliver significant improvements regarding medical error prevention. “Smart pumps are a necessary component of a comprehensive safe medication system. However, currently available smart pumps will fail to generate meaningful improvements in patient safety until they can be interfaced with other systems such as the electronic medical record, computerized prescriber order entry, bar coded medication administration systems and pharmacy information systems.”