CareFusion Launches New Innovations For Enhanced Medication Management Across Multiple Care Settings

ANAHEIM, Calif., Dec. 8, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- At the 49^th Annual American Society of Health-system Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear Clinical Meeting and Exhibition, CareFusion (NYSE:CFN) announced new innovations to expand the capabilities of its enterprise-wide medication management solutions for use in hospitals and outpatient settings.

With a record-setting audience of more than 500 people at its annual CareFusion Insider event, company executives introduced multiple new innovations and partnerships to enhance enterprise-wide medication management across an integrated delivery system, including hospitals, ambulatory care settings, long-term care facilities and behavioral health centers. The company also introduced new products to support greater transparency to a patient's medication adherence before and after receiving care in a hospital.

"We are committed to providing health systems with an optimized platform of enterprise-wide medication management, through internal innovation and collaboration agreements that provide a best-in-class experience for clinicians and their patients," said Tom Leonard, president of the Medical Systems segment for CareFusion. "Throughout any step in the medication use process at multiple care settings across a health system, CareFusion provides comprehensive solutions and analytics to help clinicians provide safe and efficient patient care."

The company unveiled its new Pyxis^® Mini system that is smaller in size than a traditional medication dispensing cabinet, but fits the unique needs of outpatient settings such as ambulatory care centers, long-term care facilities and behavioral health centers. The Pyxis Mini system fits on a table top and is operated through a desktop or laptop computer. It has less than 50 percent of the capacity of a Pyxis MedStation^® ES system, but provides the same security and access to critical medications closer to patients. The Pyxis Mini system leverages the existing Pyxis^® ES platform, using the same server, CUBIE^® pockets, inventory management and data systems as other technologies built on the Pyxis ES platform. This enables Pyxis ES customers to leverage their investment in one platform to have centralized medication management across all of their hospitals, ambulatory and long-term care settings. To date, the Pyxis ES platform has been installed in more than 280 hospitals and health systems.

To support medication adherence, the company announced a collaboration with Health Care Systems to enable new capabilities for CareFusion's MedMined^® Surveillance Advisor to provide hospitals with a list of a patient's medication regimen over the past year upon admission. The reports would help clinicians reconcile a patient's current medications with any new medications needed during his or her hospitalization. In addition, MedMined Surveillance Advisor also has the ability to provide an alert to hospital clinicians if patients do not fill a new prescription within a set period after discharge. Clinicians can select an adherence window between two and 30 days after discharge to receive a notification. This capability will help clinicians know if patients are following their instructions for the prescribed medications needed after the patient leaves the hospital.

CareFusion also announced an agreement with Medacist to further extend the company's commitment to detect and deter diversion. Under the agreement, CareFusion customers who use the company's Knowledge Portal for Dispensing will be able to run RxAuditor diversion software. RxAuditor is recognized as the leading medication diversion software in the industry.

Building on its leadership in infusion pump interoperability, the company demonstrated its interoperability solutions for the Alaris^® System with the electronic medical records systems from Cerner and Epic. The company currently has 5 live interoperability sites with Cerner and 3 live sites with Epic.

The company also demonstrated new technology that can potentially help reduce hospital re-admissions by simplifying a patient's prescribed medication regimen as they transition home. More than 30 percent of patients don't fill their medication prescriptions, and more than half of patients do not take their medications as prescribed. The new Rowa Dose system¹ takes patient-specific prescriptions of multiple medications and creates dose-specific packages to support medication adherence. Each dose (e.g. morning, afternoon and night) of a patient's medications would be contained in a package(s) that designate the date and time they should be taken. Prior to discharge, a clinician would provide the patient-specific dosages and explain that one pouch always corresponds to one administration time, which is designed to help improve medication use at home.

To support safe and efficient infused medication delivery, CareFusion highlighted two new aspects of its offering to extend beyond its industry-leading interoperability capabilities. The Pyxis^® IV System, which was demonstrated at last year's ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting and Exhibition, is now live at Avera McKenna Hospital & University Health Center in Sioux Falls, S.D. and Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kan. Avera McKenna and Wesley Medical Center use the system to accurately and efficiently compound infused medications for their hospital. The Pyxis IV System leverages their investment in the Pyxis Pharmogistics^® inventory management software and extends it to their IV room to automate the compounding process. Extending inventory management directly to the IV preparation process helps improve the accuracy of IV compounding, reduce errors and minimize waste. 

"Our goal was to implement an IV workflow software that would enhance patient safety and efficiency at the same time," said Melissa Goff, PharmD, MBA, pharmacy operations manager at Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center. "We selected the Pyxis IV system primarily based on our previous work and integration with the Pharmogistics inventory system. Adding the Pyxis IV system allowed us to only manage one interface and integrate the medication production process."

To help providers save time and improve medication safety from the pharmacy to the operating room (OR), CareFusion and Kit Check will collaborate to provide an integrated solution for medications stored in automated dispensing cabinets and/or trays and kits. CareFusion will integrate the kit and tray management and anesthesia check solutions with the CareFusion SmartWorks platform, enabling medication tracking for central pharmacy and the OR through RFID based technology.

"Our collaboration with Kit Check is another example of combining two leading technologies into a simplified solution for our customers," said Rusty Frantz, senior vice president and general manager of Dispensing Technologies for CareFusion. "By combining the benefits of both technologies, we can help hospitals improve safety and save time when managing all medications used within the Pharmacy and the OR."

CareFusion also demonstrated its Sedation Analytics offering through its Knowledge Portal for customers who have CareFusion ventilators and infusion pumps. The Sedation Analytics application combines data from CareFusion mechanical ventilators and the company's Alaris^® System infusion pumps to identify variability from the ICU sedation protocol at the hospital. A key strategy for sedation optimization is the use of daily spontaneous awakening trials (SATs), also known as sedation vacations, which are planned interruptions to continuous sedative infusions. Spontaneous breathing trials, which happen during a sedation vacation, help clinicians determine if the patient is ready to be weaned from the ventilator. The Sedation Analytics application can measure compliance with the hospital's protocols for sedation vacations and spontaneous breathing trials, and can detect increases in sedation over a specified limit.

CareFusion announced a new development to help in safe medication delivery that demonstrates how the centralized management feature of the Pyxis ES platform can extend to third-party components. The first third-party product to integrate formulary management comes with the company's long-standing collaboration with Codonics. The Pyxis^® Anesthesia ES system is currently offered with Codonics Safe Label system to automate medication management and syringe labeling in the OR and Procedural area. CareFusion now has exclusive rights to synchronized formulary management with the Codonics system. Any formulary items that are added or deleted in the central Pyxis ES server are communicated to Pyxis MedStation ES systems, Pyxis Anesthesia ES systems and now Codonics systems. The centralized formulary management saves valuable time and creates a safer, more standardized approach to formulary management.

CareFusion will be demonstrating these and many other technologies from Dec. 8-10 at the Anaheim Convention Center for the ASHP Midyear Clinical Meeting and Exhibition in booth 617.

About CareFusion Corporation
CareFusion (NYSE: CFN) is a global corporation serving the health care industry with products and services that help hospitals measurably improve the safety and quality of care. The company develops industry-leading technologies including Alaris^® infusion pumps and IV sets, MaxPlus^® and MaxZero^™ IV connectors and sets, Pyxis^® automated dispensing and patient identification systems, AVEA^®, LTV^® series and AirLife^® ventilation and respiratory products, ChloraPrep^® products, MedMined^® services for data mining surveillance, V. Mueller^® surgical instruments, and an extensive line of products that support interventional medicine. CareFusion employs more than 16,000 people across its global operations. More information may be found at www.carefusion.com.

Pyxis, Pyxis Mini System, Pyxis MedStation ES System, Pyxis ES Platform, Pyxis Anesthesia ES system, CUBIE, MedMined Surveillance Advisor, Pyxis IV System, Pyxis Pharmogistics, Alaris, CareFusion and the CareFusion logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CareFusion Corporation or one of its subsidiaries.

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/carefusion-launches-new-innovations-for-enhanced-medication-management-across-multiple-care-settings-300005883.html

SOURCE CareFusion

Related Links

http://www.carefusion.com