New relationship will help standardize information and reduce medication errors
Smiths Medical Advances Smart Infusion Pump Interoperability
Smiths Medical Media Contact
Smiths Medical, a leading global medical device manufacturer, announced an agreement today with Epic to develop connectivity between the company’s infusion systems and Epic’s Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system using Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) standard profiles to communicate, enabling an automatic flow of information for clinicians to access.
“Using the IHE frameworks allows us to join with other industry partners to develop a standardized method of communicating information and ultimately helps reduce medication errors,” said Tommy Johns, Vice President Global Product Management.
Infusion systems, such as Smiths Medical’s Medfusion® syringe pumps and CADD® ambulatory infusion pumps, are programmed by clinicians to provide patients with medication according to their therapy needs. The sophisticated systems, that include PharmGuard® medication safety software for use on a PC or via the web, allow pharmacists to develop drug libraries according to hospital-defined protocols, wirelessly deploy libraries to the pumps, wirelessly collect and manage patient therapy data, and track trends in compliance and medication dosing.
Smiths Medical’s interface development and testing agreement with Epic will allow for the transfer of infusion data to the Epic electronic medical record system to capture data from Smiths Medical’s infusion systems, via their PharmGuard® server software.
The result will allow a clinician to use an electronic medical record system to automatically send therapy data to and from patient records, saving clinicians time in daily workflow, increasing documentation accuracy, and improving patient safety by reducing the chance of errors that can occur with manual data entry.
Smiths Medical is a leading supplier of specialized medical devices and equipment for global markets, focusing on the medication delivery, vital care and safety devices market segments. It is part of , a global leader in applying advanced technologies for markets in threat and contraband detection, energy, medical devices, communications and engineered components. employs around 22,000 people in more than 50 countries.