New automated system for the preparation of IV admixtures
Florida-based Health Robotics, a specialist in robotic automation has developed an automated system for producing patient-specific IV admixtures that complements CytoCare, the company's patient-specific chemotherapy IV robot.
IV Station is aimed at helping global healthcare providers deliver rapid, cost-effective, and safer IV doses to their patients by addressing medication errors, sterility, accuracy, and waste problems in the preparation, compounding, and dispensing of IV Admixtures.
The system is the automated solution that focuses on the preparation and compounding step of the life-critical process of IV admixtures, where medication errors are critical.
A Rand Corporation study revealed huge waste of Batch IVs at hospitals in the US. Former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill described how IV drugs are filled in Batch mode every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as a way to optimise the time of pharmacists. However, patient conditions change more rapidly than every other weekday and 40% of the hospital's IV solutions that are filled on Friday come back on Monday because of changes in patient conditions. The returned IVs are simply dumped down the drain.
IV Station will address these waste problems offering health care providers the benefits of a just-in-time patient-specific automated IV compounding solution.
The same study also found that among three intensive care units treating 1,759 patients, 37 of these patients ended up with infections contracted from the central intravenous lines that had been used to administer medications, and 19 of those patients died from those infections.
IV Station is expected to become generally available to customers in Europe and the US during 2009, after final validation tests and medical device certifications processes are completed at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, affiliated with the University of London, and Campus Bio-Medico Hospital, affiliated with Opus Dei University in Rome, Italy.
The system will be manufactured, marketed, installed and supported directly by Health Robotics during its market validation phase, while the company seeks regional or global partners for its distribution.