“It is important that when making an assessment for pump selection that front line staff is involved in hands-on time with the pumps,” Bethe says. “Guidance from the company in making the switch to different tubing is also vital. Equally or possibly more important is to ensure that there is strong company support for the preparation phase involving pharmacy and nursing to define the profiles and then RN training staff who utilize a tested model with enough personnel to effectively train large numbers of nurses in a short amount of time.”

Today, hospitals are spending a lot of money on their information systems and will spend a lot of money on their smart pumps, and they want to make sure these two big investments are going to work well together.


“I think these are big decisions that you are making as a customer; you’re essentially making a bed you will lie in for five to 10 years,” LaFortune says. “You want to understand how this decision will enhance your clinical effectiveness and improve your ability to deliver therapy in a safe and more cost-effective way and make your workers more productive.”

Old faithful?
Philip Stuemke is the vice president of Novatek Medical. The company sells, rents and refurbishes infusion pumps. He says he has had a number of his customers ask about the newer technology, but they’ve been reluctant to make a move on it.

“We have a lot of people talking about going to smart pumps, but their concern is that the ones with wireless could cost a couple of hundred thousand to buy and another hundred thousand in costs a year,” he says. “With the economy the way it is, we have seen a lot of people buying old stuff and trying to maintain what they’ve got.”

John McMahon, owner of Quality Medical South, believes that there is still a market for older brands of infusion pumps.

“Infusion pumps are getting much more complicated and therefore have a greater tendency to fail because there are more things that can malfunction,” he says. “We promote older equipment because of its reliability and durability compared to newer devices.”

Other factors to consider
While the Baxa Corporation does not manufacture or design smart pumps, it provides medical devices and systems that automate pharmacy operations in the delivery of liquids to patients from the IV bag.

“Twelve years ago the smart pump market [was] born with rate control systems and now you have these really brilliant pumps that are the centerpiece of the marketplace,” says Dennis Schneider, senior VP of marketing and business for the company. “We impact about 450,000 doses a day in 3,000 hospitals worldwide, so we have a lot of experience on the liquid side.”

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