“This helps automate the administration of fluid from the programming. The pump can scan the bar code and implement all the information the pharmacist sent—patient’s name, drug and rate at how it should be delivered—and it can be programmed into the pump, which eliminates 30 to 40 button pushes,” B. Braun’s White says. “Ordinarily, you would program using buttons and if the nurse noticed there was a change needed to the medication, you would need to put the pump on hold. But with this technology, you can take a prescription bag with a barcode scanner and press a button and the pump will run.”

The information that is stored inside the pump can also be transmitted wirelessly to hospital information management systems, which allows all involved parties throughout the hospital to see what is happening.


Infusion pump manufacturers understand that nurses are busy and have a lot of patients to take care of, so a great deal of thought is put into designing new equipment to help streamline their workflow.

“The smart pump technology with programmable limits and the ability to incorporate bar code identification of the drug, patient and RN can really help close the loop on medication safety,” says Judy Bethe, manager of nursing education for Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, Calif., which uses Carefusion’s Alaris pump. “This pump provides the ability to have different profile levels, for example, critical care, medical surgical, anesthesia, etc. Within each of these profiles the limits for dose, rate, and volume can be different and thus help protect the patient from receiving a drug at too fast a rate, or too high a concentration.”

Hospitals are experiencing a number of positive results by having these interoperability systems available by their bedside.

“Working with one of the hospitals, we found we could reduce nursing time by 25 percent by using the auto-programming system,” Hudson says. “We also found that we can streamline the workflow by reducing infusion pump programming steps from 17 to seven and reduce manual bedside errors by greater than 90 percent.”

Recall issues
According to FDA statistics, thousands of serious injuries and more than 500 deaths have occurred in the past few years because of pump problems on the manufacturing level. Between 2005 and 2009, 87 infusion pump recalls were conducted to address identified safety concerns.

In July, the FDA posted a Class I recall of the Symbiq One-Channel Infuser (Model 16026) and Symbiq Two-Channel Infuser (Model 16027), manufactured by Hospira because of their potential for the devices to fail to detect air in the line at the end of an infusion.

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