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Health Robotics Announces American Joint Venture With i.v.SOFT

Posted on: Monday, 27 July 2009, 08:00 CDT

BOZEN, Italy, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Robotics today announced that it has embarked in a joint venture with i.v.SOFT in order to market, implement, and support its I.V. Workflow Engine and related software automation modules to hospitals and infusion centers in North America. One of its software modules (OncoCube) has already been installed and is being currently utilized at the University of Colorado Hospital [Denver], in addition to all-digital and totally integrated I.V. installations at La Maddalena Cancer Center in Palermo and Campus Biomedico University General Hospital in Rome.

While significant investments have already been made by North American vendors and hospitals alike applying technology in an attempt to reduce I.V. (intravenous) medication errors, these efforts have largely focused on the stand-alone phases of prescription [CPOE] and administration [Smart Infusion Pumps], without an integrated approach to I.V. Workflow and Medication Management that includes Admixture phase preparation errors, and without the capability of tying together all phases of I.V. Medication Management.

The I.V. Room has been portrayed by some in the industry as a "dark hole in the hospital" where everything is "an impossible-to-differentiate clear liquid" and things are "out of control". Others have described the I.V.Room as the last frontier in Pharmacy Automation, or a place where patient labels are printed as output out of the Pharmacy System and then Sterile Compounding supervisors hope that nothing goes wrong afterwards due to lacking or inconsistent procedures and "tribal knowledge" cultures. Lost medications wandering around the hospital, no I.V. Admixtures' audit trails, "What is in that bag?" or "Who made that dose?" unanswered questions, costly repeat I.V. Admixtures, I.V. waste, and medication errors are commonplace at many institutions, and well documented in research studies throughout the world. While I.V. Robotics solutions such as CytoCare and i.v.STATION are successfully addressing many of these issues, Health Robotics believes that anywhere between 10 to 35% of I.V.s are not compatible with Robots, due to ampoules, non-standard elastomeric infusors, plastic bottles, sub-standard vial shapes, and the large variance in thousands of medical devices globally utilized for I.V. preparation and administration such as syringes, bags, bottles, tamper-evident caps, and needles.

"From the days of one mid-1990's-designed I.V. automation solution in the industry supporting only 1 brand & size of syringes, and one late-1990s robot supporting only 1 brand of bags and 1 brand of syringes, we have come a long way with CytoCare and i.v.STATION supporting multiple brands and syringe sizes, at least 7 brands of bags and bottles each with 5 sizes, and 95% of the vials available in the market. The i.v.SOFT Workflow Engine not only addresses the automation of I.V. preparation for patient doses not handled by Robots, but it also integrates the communication processes of all clinicians involved in all phases of I.V. Medication Management, from I.V. case planning all the way to Medication Administration monitoring, and whether the I.V. Admixtures are made by a Robotic Device or manually in a biological safety cabinet (BSC). i.v.SOFT Workflow Engine customers are continuously aided within the BSCs by electronic work-lists that guide them in the execution of each scheduled task, with touch-screen, Bar-Code, RFID, and image capture technologies that reduce the risk of errors, omissions, and delays in each phase of the I.V. Medication Management process, and consequently increase the time dedicated to caring for patients," stated Werner Rainer, CEO of Health Robotics.

About Health Robotics:

Health Robotics is the global leading supplier of life-critical intra-venous medication preparation, compounding, and dispensing Robots, providing healthcare facilities in four continents with robotics technology and software automation solutions. The world-leading solutions CytoCare [hazardous IVs], i.v.STATION [non-hazardous IVs], i.v.SOFT [workflow engine] and the future development of TPNstation, have and will greatly contribute to ease global hospitals' growing pressures to improve patient safety through the effective and efficient production of sterile, accurate, and ready-to-administer IVs, to eliminate life-threatening drug-exchange errors, to decrease other medication errors and sterility risks, and to work more efficiently, increase throughput, reduce waste, and contain costs.

About i.v.SOFT:

i.v.SOFT is a privately-held Delaware [USA] based corporation with the vision to fill the industry void of automating the control of I.V. Medications from the time the patient is scheduled for infusion to the point where IV Administration is completed in a closed-loop manner. i.v.SOFT Workflow Engine interfaces with Medical Devices [Smart Infusion Pumps, I.V.Robots], Automatic Dispensing Cabinets, and Clinical Information Systems, automating the Sterile Compounding phase of I.V. patient doses not handled by Robots, and tracking to completion all scheduled intravenous medications and other injectables throughout the medical facility until the patient's treatment is complete.

SOURCE Health Robotics

Source: PR Newswire

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