BIDMC News and Notes
10/27/2009 (11:49:24am)Tags: RFID pumps technologyComments: (0)
Instead of a floor by floor search of the hospital it recently only took two elevator rides and a walk across Brookline Avenue to track down a missing medication delivery pump.
"I renamed RFID to Really Finds Infusion Devices," David Mangan, a clinical pharmacist supervisor, says with a laugh.
RFID actually stands for Radio Frequency Identification. All of BIDMC new pumps feature this tracking device. Mangan had loaned one pump to a floor to practice accessing the medication library. But the test pump had accidentally gone into general circulation, and Mangan quickly alerted Clinical Engineering.
"We were not concerned for patient safety about this pump being in general circulation," Mangan says. "The medication library on this pump was accurate, but set up differently than what nurses are used to."
It took technology toordinator Pam Dicapua and Clinical Engineering Manager Dick Hatch, Manager 30 minutes to locate the pump thanks to RFID.
Hatch says the RFID tags on each pump send out a signal to access points around the hospital, pinpointing the floor a particular pump is on. If this system had not been in place, Clinical Engineering staff would have had to manually search each of the medical center's 1,275 pumps.
"This saved us from searching through two million square feet of office space," Mangan says.
For realizing the test pump had gone into general circulation, Mangan was honored by BIDMC's Board of Directors during their Oct. 21 meeting.
To lean more about the "Caller Outer of the Month," click here.
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