Infusion Insight: Turning Data into Knowledge

Ben Franklin once said “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”   This is especially true in today’s information-driven healthcare age, and Mr. Franklin could well have been talking about infusion pumps. Infusion management is no longer just about delivering fluids. It is also about turning information into knowledge and using that knowledge to inform clinical decisions around how medications should be administered.

Regardless of where the patient is being treated, interoperability with other systems is a critical capability of the infusion management system. Doing this in a way that is seamless to the healthcare system is fundamental. An infusion management system must be able to exchange complete and meaningful information with the EMR. Whether exporting or importing data, the infusion management system acts as a partner in supporting the clinician’s need to deliver timely, high quality care. Its data interfaces need to be both consistent with those exposed by the EMR and malleable enough to deal with variations without the need for middleware to negotiate the differences.

Ivenix will demonstrate firsthand the ability of its Infusion Management System to meet these and other crucial healthcare IT goals at the upcoming HIMSS Interoperability Showcase (Booth 9000, Hall F, Use Case #2,: Surgery & Recovery). The Ivenix system will be featured with leading EMRs and alarm management systems in a live showcase of auto-programing patient-specific infusion orders, auto-documenting infusion data, and communicating alarm status to mobile devices.

The Interoperability Showcase is a premier HIMSS event that demonstrates the tremendous strides being made in health information data exchange through interoperability profiles and standards. This year, for the first time, the showcase moves beyond an exclusive focus on interoperability with the EMR to include a wide range of innovative healthcare IT systems. With its broad-based connectivity, Ivenix is in the forefront of this trend.

Ivenix is a thought leader in medical device cybersecurity with its solutions for infusion management for IT & clinical engineers. Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly important in the connected hospital and its desire to extend outside the limits of its four walls. Beyond the hospital, the notion of how a medical device interfaces with the electronic record changes dramatically. Hospitals will become more reliant on the internet, mobile medical devices and their ability to maintain connectivity between care providers and their patients. In this environment, cybersecurity becomes increasingly important, as does the system’s ability to operate with technologies in the cloud.

A comprehensive approach to infusion device security in any care setting is the subject of a whitepaper that will be distributed at HIMSS and is also available here. The paper stresses a commitment to following existing FDA guidelines to “address cybersecurity during the design and development of the medical device, as this can result in more robust and efficient mitigation of patient risk.”

In the future, the demands on health systems to improve outcomes while reducing costs will continue to increase. For this to happen in infusion management, healthcare providers need to be able to determine what medications are being delivered to whom and over what period of time.

At our booth in the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase product marketplace, Ivenix will provide a live demonstration of how this information is seamlessly communicated with clinicians, as well as offer a firsthand glimpse of the full power of its innovative data driven infusion therapy. If you’re heading to HIMSS, we hope to see you there.

George Gray is CTO & VP of Software and Information Systems for Ivenix