Incorporating Interoperability Functionality for Increasing Patient Safety with PCA-Included Multiple Infusion Therapy

摘要

Implementation of interoperability in an infusion therapy system intends to enhance safety, by allowing intercommunication among medical devices connected to a patient. Some postoperative specific cases entail the patient with multiple drug delivery devices. As adverse drug events (ADEs) can occur with the use of infusion pumps, the multiplication of those devices at the patient's bedside establishes the need of multi-modalities safety feature. The designed system propose to integrate an interoperability feature in a multiple drug delivery modules infusion therapy, including a PCA treatment, creating pertinent interactions allowing the system to respond promptly to medication errors alerts, by suspending one or more drug deliveries thanks to standby orders. An Intelligent Interoperability Manager (IIM) is linked to a group of infusion devices, a patient monitoring device, and to a hospital information system (HIS), accessible anytime for treatment information consultation. If the situation is considered to be critical, the IIM sends proper alert signals. Diverse critical situations are simulated, in a conventional multi-infusions therapy system, and in interoperability implemented system. In the first case, the time between alarm event and clinician intervention presents a significant delay, potentially leading to deterioration of patient condition. In the second case, abnormal values are detected and the system's decision-making unit reacts according to the situation. Thus, the proposed design emphasizes that interoperability functionality can enhance both safety and treatment management in the delicate system of multiple modules infusion therapy.