Institute Releases ‘Safety Innovations’ Papers on
Infusion Pumps

The AAMI Foundation’s Healthcare Technology Safety Institute (HTSI) has released two papers on how to properly implement and manage infusion pumps—devices found at the bedside of virtually every hospital patient and which can pose lethal risk if not designed and used properly.

The first paper, “Best Practices for Infusion Pump—Information Network Exchange,” presents the steps a hospital must take to properly integrate an infusion pump with its wireless network. The second, “Smart Pump Implementation: A Guide for Healthcare Institutions,” is intended to help hospitals navigate the purchasing and implementation of smart pumps, which are designed to detect programming errors before they reach the patient.

“We encourage people to not only read these papers, but also to pass them along to others that would benefit from these practical step-by-step recommendations,” says Leah Lough, executive director of the AAMI Foundation. Both of the papers are free.

Both papers are part of the institute’s “Safety Innovations” series, which is intended to highlight technology-related challenges in healthcare. Infusion pumps deliver medication, nutrients, and fluids in controlled amounts to patients intravenously. A common sight in hospitals worldwide, infusion pumps have contributed greatly to improvements in patient care. However, there have been serious problems associated with their use, such as accidental overdoses. Between 2005 and 2009, the FDA has received 56,000 reports of “adverse events” with infusion pumps, including 710 patient deaths.

HTSI was created to bring together stakeholders to address challenges such as those associated with infusion pumps. To learn more about the institute, click here.

Integrating an infusion pump with an electronic health record or other patient information system can help reduce errors thanks to functionalities such as auto dose programming or auto verification of a medication order, according to the paper “Best Practices for Infusion Pump –Information Network Exchange.”

“Although these integrative processes and functionalities facilitate accurate, timely, and complete charting of medication infusions, only a handful of healthcare facilities in the United States have adopted one or more of them,” reads the paper, drafted by HTSI’s Working Group on Infusion Systems Interoperability and Connectivity..

The paper includes five specific infrastructure requirements for pump integration, such as “a highly reliable method of associating a pump channel with a patient and a medication.”

The second paper is intended to guide a hospital through the entire process of smart pump implementation. Recommendations include the development of a drug library for the smart pump system, and the creation of a multidisciplinary committee to evaluate the machines.

Facilities should also consider the cultural shifts that smart pumps introduce, according to the paper, which is a summary of a study conducted by the University Health Network’s Health Technology Safety Research Team in Ontario, Canada.

“The migration from traditional IV infusion pumps to smart infusion systems brings about changes to practice in nursing and in pharmacy,” it reads. “For example, given that smart infusion systems require the standard concentration platform, there may be changes in who mixes the drugs (e.g., shift from nursing to pharmacy).”

To read the infusion pump network integration paper, click here (PDF). For the smart pump paper, click here (PDF).

An earlier paper on alarm system improvements is available here (PDF). More papers are expected to be released this summer.

AAMI, the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation, is a nonprofit organization founded in 1967. It is a diverse community of nearly 7,000 healthcare technology professionals united by one important mission—supporting the healthcare community in the development, management, and use of safe and effective medical technology.