- Intelliguard offers its Mira Care Station with RFID for tracking drugs in hospitals, while Codonics sells a digital label production device for anesthesia syringes
- By teaming up, the companies are offering an integrated system that could track a medication from receipt at the hospital until the used syringe is properly discarded
Two medication visibility technology companies have teamed up to provide what they predict to be the future of drug management—cradle to grave, digital views into the dispensing of medicine used in clinical environments and surgeries.
Intelliguard’s Mira Care Station is in use in hospitals to track medications such as anesthesia as they are received and then made available to patients, while Codonics Safe Label System (SLS) 600i creates digital labels for syringes in which many of those medications are used, said Intelliguard’s chief product officer Rob Sobie.
When the syringe is returned either empty after the use on a patient or unused, the Mira Care Station can scan the barcode on the label and verify the destruction of remaining product.
QR code or RFID Tracking Throughout a Lifespan
Now the two companies are offering a single solution that integrates data from both solutions, which can be used with RFID tag reading, barcode scans or a combination of both.
For years, tracking inventory of medications including anesthesia has been a time-consuming challenge for healthcare companies, pointed out Sobie.
Intelliguard provides a solution that leverages UHF RFID tags that can be applied to medications before or when they arrive at a hospital’s pharmacy. The company offers the MiraCare secured carts that automatically identify those medications, and the software that manages the data throughout the drug’s acquisition, storage and use.
Inventory Management Extending to Anesthetics
Codonics offers a different solution aimed specifically at managing the dilution of anesthesia medications in the OR for a specific patient, and its administration. The narcotic drugs are highly regulated and must be tracked closely throughout the process, said Mike Kolberg, Codonics’ vice president. In the OR, an anesthesiologist takes a vial of medication, combines it with a diluent in a syringe, and a label is then produced for that syringe so the anesthesiologist can confirm what is being administered or what was discarded.
Traditionally this was accomplished by manually handwriting a label that is applied to a syringe, but recent guidelines have required machine readable technology—which is what Codonics offers.
With the partnership, Codonics will be combining the data collection from the medication and printing it on labels for syringes, Sobie explained. In that way the product can be linked in the software to the initial vial of medication that is tracked through Intelliguard. The Intelliguard station can be used to not only create a record of the medication that went into the syringe but confirming that the syringe was properly disposed of after the procedure as well.
How it’s Done
First, users log into the Intelliguard secure cart in the operating room, and simultaneously log into the Codonics Safe Label system which identifies the clinician and enables them to remove the medications they need for patient procedures.
The next step for the medication is transference into a syringe for a patient, including the appropriate dosage. Users employ the Codonics SLS 600i to scan the vial. A visual and audible confirmation of the drug and concentration provides an electronic safety check and then creates a color-coded label printed with a barcode and readable text about the medication. Those prepared syringes are then ready for the patient before they even enter the surgical room.
“We produce a medication label compliant with the Joint Commission [healthcare certification program],” said Kolberg, that meets the guidelines of the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) and Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP).
Intelliguard provides RFID-enabled labels for parenteral (intravenous) medications. The tag ID on the vial links to data about that medication in its software. When healthcare providers read an RFID tag at the Mira Station’s built-in RFID reader and scan the medication’s label on SLS to create a label for the syringe, the system marries that syringe with the medication that was already being tracked.
“Now you have met all the guidelines to dispense the right medication [digitally],” Kolberg said.
Tracking Controlled, Non-Controlled Inventory
The technology enables faster and safer production of the syringe label, an automated trail of the syringe’s use and administration, along with who was responsible for that medication in the OR.
With the partnership, “our systems mutually integrate to the hospitals EMR [medical records] systems — we share information back and forth between our systems,” said Sobie. For hospitals that means they can digitally select a medication or even a patient name and view the drug and its history.
Today, Codonics’ labels come with barcode but do not include RFID tags, however the SLS 600i is pre-wired for RFID, making it upgradable to read and write RFID. So far, Kolberg said, “the issue with RFID is it hasn’t made it to the mainstream yet in healthcare.” That means the majority of medications do not already have RFID tags on them.
RFID Benefits
Once RFID is adopted, however, the technology offers benefits that are out of reach for barcodes or printed labels, Kolberg added. By using an RFID tag, the cloud-based data linked to the tag ID can be extensive.
“I don’t just get the medication name, I get the lot number, the expiration and serial number, which can be added to the SLSRFID Label and passed to the EMR at administration,” he said.
If RFID tags are applied to syringe’s they could link to a new expiration related to the syringe itself. Once a medication is drawn up in a syringe it may be useable only for a few hours, and that data could be tracked.
“We recognize the technology is in its evolution,” Sobie said. In the future they may offer a dual chip RFID tag with both an NFC chip to be read with a smart phone, and passive UHF RFID tag for a longer range read for inventory management purposes.
UHF RFID for instance can track a large number of medications in a cart or a drawer, but when a syringe is administered to a specific patient, a shorter range to isolate the tag read would be necessary.
Pilots Underway
Pilots of the integrated solution are in the planning phase, the companies said. There are existing Intelliguard customers who could adopt the integrated system, as well as customers using Codonics Safe Label System.
“There’s a fundamental change happening in healthcare in general — there’s going to be more applications more information [to track] more e-pedigree identification processes that requires more information encoded on the label on a small vial. You can only fit so much on a barcode on a small label,” Kolberg said.
Sobie agreed, saying “the idea is to use RFID to track more and more information[related to a drug] that’s important maybe in different areas of the hospital. Now you’ve got full track and trace directly from cradle to grave.”