RFID helps smart medical drug management reduce the complexity of the clinical environment

The relationship between the anesthesiology department and the pharmacy department is often strained due to the competition of priorities. But the ultimate goal is the same: to provide high-quality patient care. But to achieve this is difficult.

The anesthesiology department is responsible for properly distributing and managing the inventory during the operation, while the pharmacy is responsible for ensuring that all their medicines are readily available and in appropriate quantities. Hospitals and medical systems' investment in real-time tracking technology and solutions is crucial, because this can break the information silos between the anesthesia department and the pharmacy department and connect the two workflows together.

Current status

The Department of Anesthesia and Nursing is known as a special hero in fighting the epidemic. It is more urgent than ever that they are ready to provide the critical care and life-saving tools that the community urgently needs. In addition, the implementation of effective drug management techniques in the operating room will directly affect patient care and safety.

The operating room is usually high-risk and the overall rhythm is fast. In addition to the important role of managing the respiratory tract and other clinical tasks, the anesthesiology department is also responsible for managing patient medication. Most hospitals store medications in trolleys (usually tool carts purchased from hardware stores) and rely on anesthesiologists to write the time and dosage of administration on paper.

Just as importantly, the challenges in the operating room can also make anesthesiologists feel tired and burnout, and may affect the effectiveness of patient care. But the challenges don't stop there.

The above mentioned are only the shortcomings of hospitals and medical institutions that lack effective technology to manage drug inventory.

Medical staff drug abuse and patient safety

For hospital staff, it has always been important to supervise the correct use of all drugs, among which narcotic drugs or controlled drugs are given priority. Statistics show that 10%-15% of anesthesiology clinicians abuse drugs at some stage in their careers. For example, under normal circumstances, medical staff can obtain medicines by moving from one work place to another-here "transfer" is a polite term for theft.

In the book "Ensuring the Safety of Narcotics: The Standards of Care Evolve with the Development of the Hepatitis C Epidemic", Brian Thomas emphasized the incident: drug addicted medical staff not only steal drugs from their employers, And in some cases, these medicines are given to oneself instead of patients.

In addition to lawsuits, medical committees and nursing investigations, and the negative impact on hospitals, drug addicted medical staff move drugs outside of the workplace, which poses a safety hazard to themselves and their patients.

Statistics for drug addiction among anesthesiologists are higher, which may be due to high work pressure, long working hours, job burnout, and easy exposure to narcotics. Even if some people just visit and do not transfer medications, with stricter medication management, more suspicious situations can be detected as early as possible.

Deviation from clinician's focus

Although this sounds like common sense, the anesthesia care team will not be hired to monitor or count drugs; they are hired to care for patients and provide them with quality care. However, without deploying a reasonable automation system, anesthesiology clinicians have often served as managers for most of the past decade. It is not uncommon for surgeons to cancel or delay operations due to lack of drugs. And the time cost of the operating room is expensive; saving the time of the operation will not only save money, but also improve the safety and satisfaction of the patient.
 

Increasing financial burden

When providing services to patient groups, medical staff will face a series of complex and numerous challenges. One of the challenges is that with the reduction of financial funds, the requirements for accountability of regulators continue to increase. In a complex and constantly changing environment, some medical institutions have realized the need for better drug management methods and are looking for ways to truly automate all aspects of the medical process.

The future of drug management

In view of the current situation, drug transfers and drug shortages are more serious, hospitals are now more than ever paying attention to the deployment of automatic identification technology in the operating room to save staff time and significantly reduce the occurrence of human errors. This is especially important in the operating room, because the anesthesiologist in the operating room uses hundreds of vials or syringes for the patient every day, while ensuring that the patient gets the correct medicine.

Nowadays, hospitals have two technological modes for drug inventory management in operating rooms: barcodes and RFID. Barcode technology can manage access to medicines, standardize them and support regulatory compliance. In addition, barcode scanning technology also helps to reduce the risk of medication errors during medication and tonic processes.

Recently, advanced RFID technology has further improved the visibility of drugs in the operating room by accurately calculating all drugs (including item-level narcotics) and integrating complete electronic health records, providing the first time for drug transfer, drug waste, and drug delivery. Real-time tracking and management of medication methods. This technology provides an uninterrupted, user-friendly experience for the anesthesiology department, while providing real-time visibility and reliable data indicators for the pharmacy. For decades, hospitals have been particularly in need of automatic identification technology such as RFID.

Now that the hospital has the right hardware and software technology, clinicians can reduce manual inventory management tasks and focus more on the most important aspect of patient care.