| The pharmacy is a key factor in the difficult balance between
healthcare needs and budgetary concerns.
The close monitoring of pharmaceuticals in hospitals is an essential tool whose goal is to optimise the use of medicines through a careful analysis of their path from the pharmacy to when they are administered to the patient.
And it is during this phase that involuntary errors may occur.
The risk of error can be reduced by changing the organisational model, re-engineering and computerising the services starting with the patient visit.
The request passes from the department to the hospital pharmacy in real time, allowing them to immediately identify the missing drug and to create a precise relationship between the prescription and the department’s needs.
Making it possible to plan purchases, reduce stock levels and prevent medicines from expiring.
The computerised prescription also allows for an automatic comparison with the information on specialised data bases – which signal warnings about potential unwanted side effects and incompatibilities – and, most importantly, allows the hospital pharmacy to administer the appropriate medicines.
The management of unit-doses, a key element in the latest pharmaceutical logistics systems, allows physicians to calibrate the therapy based on the real needs of the various departments.
By assigning a personalised bar code, each patient is guaranteed to receive the correct dosage of the medicine in a single packet.
Ingegneria Biomedica Santa Lucia S.p.A. (ISBL) has invested, through a special project, in the creation of a system for re-engineering and computerising the pharmaceutical management processes, from the prescription to the administration of the personalised and controlled therapy.
During the patient visit, the physician prescribes the therapy for each patient using a special software program (SOFIA), created and owned by IBSL that is installed on portable
devices.
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A new
organisational model for computerising the path
of medicines
in the hospital,
reducing
healthcare costs
while insuring
increased
reliability.
| From the department, the data is automatically sent to the internal pharmacy where the personalised therapies are prepared, with a different degree of automation based on whether or not the medicine is to be administered in a unit dose.
From the pharmacy, the medicine is selected in the provisioned single dose and then transferred to an automatic storage area where the personalised therapy for each individual patient is packaged.
The cycle ends in the departments where the medicine is administered to the patient. This process is also controlled by the software that verifies if the medicine is coherent with the doctor’s prescription.
And once the nurse confirms that the medicine has been administered, the software also removes the medicine from the department’s stock levels and assigns it to the patient. The management of possible exceptions or extemporaneous changes in therapy is performed through supplies in the
department, found in significantly reduced quantities compared to quantities required by traditional management models.
Certain departments, selected based on appropriate criteria (such as the high number of patients admitted through the Emergency Room, the high percentage of changes in therapy during the day, etc.) are equipped with automatic medicine cabinets – periodically replenished by the pharmacy through a close control of supply levels through the software- able to
package the personalised therapy directly in the department.
These same medicine cabinets, through a close monitoring once again performed by the software, also allows hospital personnel to withdraw medicines for extemporaneous administrations, when changes are made to therapies and for emergencies. This process is also performed through more
simple cabinets, located in the majority of the departments.
Considering the complexity of the system and the need to integrate it with the hospital’s various departments, ISBL does not offer simply a selection of technologies, it offers a “turnkey” system, able to guarantee the flawless functioning of each phase, of every technology, of every activity which supports the process (staff training, in-house support in the department, ongoing consultation services…), not including those activities that the healthcare facility deems should remain in the hands of their own personnel.
The responsibility of the clinical criteria for pharmaceutical management remains in the hands of the hospital’s administration and, more specifically, with the pharmacy director.
The service may include pre-financing for the entire investment.
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