Chemotherapy preparation traceability

The medicine circuit is one of the care process which is the most transversal and structured in health establishments. It is especially complex because the different stages (instructions, preparation, dispensing, administration), the number of participants (doctors, chemists, assistants, nurses), as well as the information and product flow, all constitute a considerable potential for mistakes which can unfortunately threaten patients security.

While hospitalised, 6% to 10% of patients suffer each year from the adverse effects of medicine, a third of them severely. These incidents could be avoided in the majority of cases. All result "mechanically" in a significant lengthening of the average duration of stay.

Beyond the medical and human costs resulting from this problematic event, the economic issue of the "medicinal error" is extremely significant. In the context of health control costs, it is imperative to be able to evaluate it and bring a response which will be inevitably technological and which can be standardised to current practice.

Chemotherapies reliability and traceability

According to the 'good usage contract', the setting up of technological solutions must allow the reliability and traceability of a chemotherapy anti-cancer circuit from its preparation to its delivering to the patient, by optimising the treatment directions, product dispensing and administering, while guaranteeing a better transmission of the quantitative and qualitative data along the different flows.

In respect of the conflict between the different health establishments and the medicinal iatrogeny, our equipment allow a follow-up at a distance and in real time for the different data flows from the instructions until the administering of the treatment to the patient.

Indeed, the technological innovation consists in our ability to put the information deemed indispensable at any given moment at the disposal of the different participants of the health process.

This solution depends on the association (transparent for the operator), of an electronic chip to the support already in place (thereby rendering the drip bag "intelligent") and on its automatic encoding along the different processes, all the way to product dispensing.

This application of automatic traceability must be able to be perfectly integrated into the human and technical organisation and will allow the care staff to devote more time, and in a more relaxing frame of mind, to benefit the patient.

Exhaustive traceability from the preparation to the administering

This securing of the chemotherapy preparation circuit approach offers a response which will be efficient and also necessarily adaptable to all the sites engaged in the therapeutic universe of the cancerous pathologies.

More globally, it also aims at raising the level of care security by bringing the guarantee of a perfect traceability to all the "unitary doses" preparations to be delivered by name (parenteral feeding, dialysis sacs, preparations to be injected,...)

The automation/computerization appears as the corner stone of the medicine circuit security and the medicines disposition insofar as:

• It allows a better follow-up of the mode of applications of the instructing, dispensing and administering process of the products,
• It constitutes a precedent for the receipt and transmission of the quantitative and qualitative data foreseen in the good usage contract.

Objectives:

• Suppression of the mistakes owing to the recovery and the "difficulties" of interpreting the instructions,
• Automated verifications of instructions,
• Optimisation of the flows,
• Controlled and named instructions at the patient's arm: to make sure that the right medicines are administered to the right patient,
• Real time management of available treatments,
• Delivery of medicine actually prescribed,
• Homogeneous work allocation between available resources,
• Computerization of named instructions,
• Complete traceability of products/treatments flow,
• Improvement on the instructions time for doctors,
• Setting up of service 'instruments panel',
• Rationalization of purchases, stock management and provisioning of the care units,
• Automatic enrichment of patients' files, of invoicing bases,...

Objectives of traceability with RFID

• "Encoding" of information on chip, from the program "Métier", then "au fil de l'eau" (with the current) running with the different flows (material and products) from PC platforms,
• To secure the medicine circuit, by bringing the proof that the right treatment has been administered to the right patient, which underlines the precise tracing in real time to the patient's bed:
• The information linked to: which, what, when, by memorising the preparation typology and all the intermediary products making it up.
• To automatically feed the patient file and essential computer data for invoicing

What are the "potential" contributions of RFID in the logistic process of the Care Establishment?

• Automatic enrichment of the information on line,
• Complete and reliable management of the flow identification and traceability process, all along the life of the sac,
• Knowledge in real time of the "available" stocks and the status of each product,
• Absolute traceability of the conditions of preservation (transport and storage) and the complete logistics of the sac until it reaches the patient's arm.

The "standard" architecture allows to organise the number and the configuration of the posts to come in separate modules according to the present and future needs.