Abstract :Abstract
Medication errors (MEs) can occur at various stages throughout the medication process, e.g. when prescribing, transcribing, dispensing, and/or administering a drug. MEs associated with IV pumps occur frequently, have the potential to cause harm, and are epidemiologically diverse. Although smart pumps are a useful component of a comprehensive safe medication system, these devices cannot generate meaningful improvements in patient safety until they can be interfaced with other systems such as the electronic medical records (EMR), computerized prescriber order entry (CPOE), bar coded medication administration systems (BCMA), and pharmacy information systems (PhIS). Based on this evidence, we propose a pre-post intervention pilot study to assess the efficacy of interfacing smart infusion pump servers with other information systems (CPOE, BCMA, EMR and PhIS) to minimize the likelihood of medication administration errors (MAEs).