BI&T Examines Progress in Infusion Safety
Two years after AAMI and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held an unprecedented summit on making infusions safer, what kind of progress has there been?
The cover story of the September/October issue of AAMI’s peer-reviewed journal, BI&T (Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology), explores that question and provides some answers.
One of the biggest advances is greater recognition that improving the management and use of infusion pumps must be tackled from a “systems” perspective with greater multidisciplinary collaboration.
“I see more of a systems approach being taken,” says Tony Easty, senior scientist at the University Health Network in Toronto. “Manufacturers are more aware of the difficulties that occur in implementation and clinical use, and healthcare organizations and clinical engineers are looking at infusion safety in a more comprehensive way than before.”
Easty is one of many experts quoted in the article, “What’s the Prognosis? Making Infusion Systems Safer.” Many of those interviewed participated in the original two-day summit, held in October 2010.
Appreciating the “systems” dynamic is critical to achieving long-term improvements in the use of infusion pumps, according to Timothy Vanderveen, PharmD, vice president of The Center for Safety and Clinical Excellence at CareFusion, and a member of the AAMI Board of Directors. “For the most part, when errors do occur, it is a system issue and not a singular event,” he said.
By way of example, Vanderveen compared infusion pumps to automobiles. “Accidents are not typically [due to] the car, but more the driver, the conditions, the maintenance, and so on.”
The cover story includes an update from the FDA on what it describes as progress in incident reporting and approval of devices. Additionally, the article includes a list of 10 steps that hospitals and other healthcare facilities can take to improve infusion safety.
The article also details what’s happening on the research front, including a device design and usability project at Johns Hopkins University. The AAMI Foundation’s Healthcare Technology Safety Institute (HTSI) is playing a leading role in facilitating more infusion safety research.
Since that infusion system summit, AAMI and the FDA—sometimes joined by additional partners—have joined forces on other summits, focusing attention on some of the toughest challenges in healthcare technology. Earlier this month, the two hosted a summit on medical device interoperability.
The September/October issue of BI&T covers a host of other topics, including the impact of hospital noise on patient safety and healing. There’s also a commentary from a healthcare technology management executive on how achieving a better work/life balance can improve your management skills.
BI&T has a readership of nearly 13,000, and is a benefit of AAMI membership. The award-winning journal is dedicated to the developers, managers, and users of medical devices and technology. For more information about BI&T and to see highlights from this issue, click here.
For more information on HTSI, click here.
Posted: October 10, 2012