Utilizing Electronic Health Record Information to Optimize Medication Infusion Devices: A Manual Data Integration Approach

Abstract

Health information technology is increasingly utilized within healthcare delivery systems today. Two examples of this type of technology include the capture of patient-specific information within an electronic health record and intravenous medication infusion devices equipped with dose error reduction software known as drug libraries. Automatic integration of these systems, termed intravenous (IV) interoperability, should serve as the goal toward which all healthcare systems work to maximize patient safety. For institutions lacking IV interoperability, we describe a manual approach of querying the electronic health record to incorporate medication administration information with data from infusion device software to optimize drug library settings. This approach serves to maximize utilization of available information to optimize medication safety provided by drug library software.