Medication administration is often put in the spotlight as a key area for improvement in order to boost patient safety.
So it’s no surprise that that ensuring accurate administration is a priority for healthcare providers around the world.
With this in mind, BlueStar partner BIQ offers an excellent medication administration tracking tool, which is compatible with most of the mobility and specific healthcare hardware equipment sold by BlueStar.
Called Pharmatrac, BIQ’s app helps to make sure no mistakes are made while giving medication to patients.
The app is designed to enable hospitals to close the loop of the medication cycle by allowing pharmacies to create 2D barcodes to be placed in unit dose packages that include information about the medication, from lot number to expiry date.
Then, at the patient bedside, nurses are able to use a handheld device to ensure safe medication administration by reviewing three secure elements: patient, prescription and medication.
Nurses scan the patient wristband to identify and access information about the patient, including their electronic prescriptions. The nurse can then scan each medication to be administered. Finally, the nurse confirms the administration on their device.
Pharmatrac will automatically compare each drug and alert the nurse of any issues, such as when lot numbers are invalid or if expiration dates have been reached.
In case not all the prescribed medication has been administered by the end of the administration, the system requires that a justification be provided before the action can be terminated.
The Pharmatrac app is user friendly with a simple and intuitive graphic interface, provides audio and visual alerts and offers easy integration as the system is designed to work in any HIS (Hospital Information System) through different protocols.
Using Phamratrac ensures the five rights of medical administration are followed:
- Correct patient
- Correct medication
- Correct dosage
- Correct time
- Correct route.
Pharmatrac also completes the medical record of the patient automatically, meaning nurses spend less time on paperwork and more time caring for their patients.
Correct medication administration is critical to ensure safety in the healthcare environment. What’s more, tracking the medication accurately provides efficiency to the hospital and health service.
For more information, watch BIQ’s Pharmatrac video here.
