The University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMC) in Burlington uses RFID technology to track drugs
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The University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMC) in Burlington recently announced the use of RFID technology to track five million drugs.
UVMC Acting CIO and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Adam Buckley said that RFID can enable hospitals to reliably track the flow of medicines from order to distribution at the bedside at any time, which can greatly improve patient safety.
Dr. Buckley said, “Using RFID can reduce medication errors, ensure timely delivery, and use technology and systems to help avoid problems caused by human factors.”
The 1 mg/ml strength of Weichang Ning drug became the fifth million UVMC drug to be tracked by RFID. The service is provided by the Washington-based Kit Check company, which provides automated drug management and drug tracking services. company.
Karen McBride, director of UVMC’s pharmaceutical services department, said that ensuring patient safety is the main reason for using RFID technology.
Karen McBride said, “Because the anesthesiologist in the operating room has a variety of independent toolboxes according to different cases, we have a large number of toolboxes in our hospital, in addition to emergency vehicles and resuscitation cart trays similar to the toolboxes.” . She emphasized that there are often people who worry about accidentally getting the medicines in the toolbox wrong, and the use of RFID basically eliminates this possibility.
McBride explained the principle of operation. When the pharmacy receives the medicine to be entered into the toolbox, the pharmaceutical technician will enter the information including the name, quantity, batch number and expiration date of the medicine into the software system, and use the information to print out the RFID label and mark the medicine. During this process, there will be two independent inspection processes, and the second person will enter the information again to prevent errors and match the relevant information.
Mark Neuenschwander, a barcode expert and consultant in Bellevue’s drug dispensing, preparation and management, said that KitCheck has “successfully” used RFID to mark anesthesia packs and has been used in more than 100 hospitals. He said that in the past RFID companies considered versatility and did not start at the micro level. Now the situation has changed.
For example, MEPS Real-Time Inc. is a company that provides smart protection RFID solutions. It now focuses on providing hospitals with “critical inventory” services, that is, those high-cost drugs and anesthesia kits and trays that need to be stored in the refrigerator. High-risk drugs.
Aethon Inc’s MedEx tracking software uses TUG robots to quickly transfer items in the hospital and quickly tag and track drugs through RFID.
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