Health Robotics Announces Virtual High-Availability Architecture (99.99%) for I.V. Automation and Robotics

BOZEN, Sud-Tirol, Italy, April 6, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- As part of its I.V. Room of the Future initiative to cooperate with other industry leaders, Health Robotics today announced the immediate availability of its revolutionary Virtual High-Availability Architecture (up to 99.99%), including state-of-the-art, virtualization compliant, cluster and fail-over, disaster recovery, and back-up solutions for its CytoCare and i.v.STATION robots [with future expansion to TPNstation when available], and its i.v.SOFT Workflow Engine for manual compounding, all of this at a fraction of the cost of competitors' obsolete and uncertain robotic designs that lack back-up and redundancy features despite their much higher cost of ownership.

"Once again Health Robotics pioneers a new concept in I.V. Automation and Robotics: the certainty that Hospital Pharmacists no longer have to scramble to find pharmacy technicians to urgently go back to Laminar Airflow Hoods (LAFs) and try remember how to compound I.V. Admixtures in emergency situations due to planned maintenance, computer upgrades, regular cleaning and sterilization procedures, or unplanned downtime. This revolutionary solution is available to our customers as an extra option, either on Health Robotics' supplied Intel-based servers or on customers' centrally managed Virtual Machines. We believe that total redundancy and life-critical risk reduction should be requirements to the I.V. Room of the Future", stated Werner Rainer, Health Robotics' CEO.

Virtualization is an irreversible process already initiated by many of the top-rated medical centers around the world, and it should be much more so when it comes to life-critical I.V. Admixtures. Health Robotics decided to engineer this concept as an additional option for our global customers and therefore safeguard their investments in I.V. Automation, providing full support for the implementation of our core technology on all major virtual environments. The Virtual High-Availability Architecture takes advantage of all the security measures already set in place by our customers, adapting our architecture, robotics and software solutions and implementation approaches to the customers' needs and not vice versa. Health Robotics' core technology can be deployed on multiple configurations, ranging from one active node and a stand-by node, to active/passive clustered nodes with a remote disaster-recovery stand-by node. Thanks to its I.V. Room of the Future strategic alliance with MEDarchiver srl, a member of the Oracle(TM) partner network, Health Robotics is now able to implement its exclusive rule-based, intelligent routing process, on the outstanding and industry leading Oracle(TM) Database.

"We tailor our Virtual High-Availability Architecture to each customer's needs, where all the nodes representing an 'actor' in the I.V. Admixtures workflow are planned for, such as the robots, the LAFs' manual [computer assisted] compounding workstations, and the system interfaces with third party information systems. All the single points of failure are taken into account, adding backup robot units and workstations to address potential computer failures, but also considering the need for a centralized database system and communication management tools, guaranteeing transparent fail-over for the entire I.V. Workflow. To our customers, this means not only the ability to manage spare or redundant nodes and hardware components like an additional robot or workstation, but also the flexibility to detect any failure in the virtual network and automatically initiate a recovery procedure, for example re-routing pending I.V. Admixtures jobs to the most appropriate available resource (robots or i.v.SOFT-assisted LAF), including production load balancing", stated Fabio Fioravanti, Health Robotics' Director of Software Development.

About Health Robotics:

Health Robotics is the undisputed global leading supplier of life-critical intra-venous medication robots, providing healthcare facilities in 5 continents with robotics technology and software automation solutions deployed utilizing virtual high-availability technology. Its world-leading solutions CytoCare(TM) [hazardous IVs], i.v.STATION(TM) [non-hazardous IVs], i.v.SOFT(TM) [workflow engine for manual compounding, powered by MEDarchiver], and TPNstation(TM) [totally-automated parenteral nutrition] have and will greatly contribute to ease hospitals' growing pressures to improve patient safety, increase throughput and contain costs. Through the effective and efficient production of sterile, accurate, tamper-evident and ready-to-administer IVs, Health Robotics' solutions help hospitals eliminate life-threatening drug-exchange errors, decrease other therapy oversights and sterility risks, work more efficiently, reduce waste and controlled substances' diversion, and diminish the gap between rising patient volume/acuity and scarce nursing and pharmacy staff. For more information, please visit http://www.health-robotics.com

    For additional information, please contact:

    Health Robotics S.r.l.
    Gaspar G. DeViedma,
    Executive V.P., General Counsel, and Member of the Board of Directors
    Italy: +39-346-963-4934
    USA: +1-609-980-7976
    Canada: +1-289-470-1456
    Malaysia: +60-321-848-223
    [email protected]

SOURCE Health Robotics