Can We Harmonize Medication Management Across Europe?

Can We Harmonize Medication Management Across Europe?

According to WHO, the global cost associated with medication errors is 42 billion US dollars. Errors can happen at the point of prescribing, transcribing from one system to the other, or administration, when the wrong patient is given either the wrong drug or the wrong dose. Medication administration errors can be prevented with the introduction of closed-loop medication management, where all points of medication handling are connected and done electronically; even medication administration is done with the help of barcode scanning of the patient barcode and medication barcode. Three European specialists from the Netherlands, UK, and Belgium recently started a European project, Asclepius, which advocated for the introduction of closed-loop medication management systems in the hospitals. They connected with colleagues from UK, France, Iceland, Belgium, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden to strive for alignment on the European level. So in today’s discussion, you will hear from Patrick van Oirschot, Patrick Koch and Francine de Stoppelaar talk about the need for improved medication safety.


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Show notes:

Main Discussion:

  • [00:01:00] Medication administration errors can be prevented with the introduction of closed-loop medication management, where all points of medication handling are connected electronically.


Guest Introductions:

  • [00:04:00] Patrick van Oswalt ("Pat"), a veteran in hospital pharmacy with a focus on digitalization and closed-loop medication management strategies.
  • [00:05:00] Francine de Stoppelaer, a clinical pharmacist with a 25-year career in healthcare leadership, notably involved in building and operating the Cleveland Clinic London.
  • [00:06:00] Patrick, with a background in medical imaging and pharmacy automation, emphasizes the need for digital transformation in hospital pharmacies.

Challenges and Solutions:

  • [00:08:00] Discussion on medication safety across Europe, highlighting the significant number of medication errors and associated costs. Specific examples include 19,000 deaths per year in Germany due to medication errors.
  • [00:10:00] Explanation of closed-loop medication management and barcode scanning at the bedside to ensure the right medication reaches the right patient.
  • [00:14:00] Different approaches to medication management in various countries, focusing on the importance of digital and automated processes.

Implementation Strategies:

  • [00:16:00] Discussion on where hospitals should start when considering digital transformation for medication safety, highlighting the importance of electronic prescribing and bedside scanning.
  • [00:18:00] The experience of implementing a fully digital hospital at Cleveland Clinic London, including workforce planning and gaining buy-in from healthcare professionals.

Project Overview:

  • [00:20:00] Introduction to the Asclepius project and its goals to harmonize medication management workflows across Europe.
  • [00:22:00] Highlighting the need for standardization in medication databases and the varying approaches to medication management across different countries.

Impact and Future Directions:

  • [00:24:00] The potential impact of digital and automated medication management on patient safety, efficiency, and sustainability.
  • [00:26:00] Encouraging adoption of best practices and the importance of measuring and monetizing the benefits of closed-loop systems.
  • [00:28:00] Challenges in convincing decision-makers and ensuring effective implementation amidst existing workloads.


[00:00:00] Dear listeners, Welcome to Faces of Digital Health, a podcast about digital health and

[00:00:06] how healthcare systems around the world adopt technology with me, Tjasa Zajc.

[00:00:14] Last year I attended the clinical pharmacy congress in the UK and one thought stood out

[00:00:21] to me.

[00:00:22] One of the clinical pharmacists said, We all overestimate the benefits of medicines.

[00:00:31] Medications can cure or kill.

[00:00:35] According to WHO, the global cost associated with medication errors is 42 billion US dollars.

[00:00:42] Errors can happen at the point of prescribing, transcribing from one system to another or

[00:00:48] when medications are administered, when the wrong patient is given either the wrong drug

[00:00:54] or the wrong dose.

[00:00:57] Wrong administration errors can be prevented with the introduction of closed loop medication

[00:01:02] management where all points of medication handling are connected and done electronically.

[00:01:08] Even medication administration is done with the help of barcode scanning, which means

[00:01:13] that the nurse scans the patient, scans the medication barcode and makes sure that

[00:01:19] the right patient gets the right dose and the right medication at the right time.

[00:01:26] Three European specialists from the Netherlands, UK and Belgium recently started a European

[00:01:32] project Asklepius which advocates for the standardization of hospital medication management

[00:01:38] across Europe through the introduction of closed loop medication management systems

[00:01:43] in hospitals.

[00:01:46] Francine Destoplar, Patrick Koch and Patrick Van Oisrot connected with colleagues from

[00:01:53] the UK, France, Iceland, Belgium, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden to strive for the alignment

[00:02:00] on the European level.

[00:02:02] So in today's episode you will hear a little bit more about the challenges with medication

[00:02:09] handling across Europe, potential for improvement and where we need to start to improve patient

[00:02:17] safety when it comes to medications.

[00:02:21] Enjoy the show and if you haven't yet make sure to check out our newsletter which you can

[00:02:25] find at fodh.substack.com.

[00:02:29] And if you will enjoy the show also check out our LinkedIn page and also subscribe

[00:02:34] to the podcast wherever you listen to podcasts or leave a rating or review to help us reach

[00:02:41] new listeners as well.

[00:02:44] Thank you.

[00:03:02] Hello everyone.

[00:03:03] We're here today to talk about project Asklepius which kind of strives to advocate for medication

[00:03:11] optimization across Europe to improve medication safety and decrease patient harm.

[00:03:17] So maybe just a brief round of introductions from everyone just so we understand what kind

[00:03:25] of draw view to this project.

[00:03:27] Maybe we can start with Patrick van Oschert who I'm going to refer to as Pat in the future

[00:03:34] questions in this discussion.

[00:03:37] So Pat go ahead.

[00:03:39] Yes, I'm happy to.

[00:03:41] I started my career in the hospital pharmacy world 28 years ago in a hospital pharmacy

[00:03:46] doing an internship there.

[00:03:47] I loved this world so much that I stayed there for another year then worked for

[00:03:52] over 14 years at a pharmaceutical wholesaler and since 2013 I'm the owner of good pharmacy

[00:03:59] practice support a boutique consultancy company based in the Netherlands but working across

[00:04:04] Europe always on topics of digitalization, closed up medication management strategy

[00:04:10] and one of my hobby projects is 3D printing of medication in a personalized way.

[00:04:17] Francine please what's your background?

[00:04:21] Hi, so I'm Francine de Stoplaar.

[00:04:23] I have about a 25 year career in healthcare, healthcare leadership.

[00:04:30] I am a pharmacist, hospital pharmacist and also a clinical pharmacologist have worked

[00:04:37] most of my career in hospitals.

[00:04:40] So a deep contact with patients and the clinical experience and the last number of years I've

[00:04:46] worked more into in hospital management and operations and my last eight years I've been

[00:04:54] working on a very special project and it was building an entirely new hospital in the

[00:04:59] centre of London who's in the back garden of Buckingham Palace called Cleveland Clinic

[00:05:03] London.

[00:05:04] And I was there from the very start employee number three and in addition to doing

[00:05:11] broad clinical operation work I also was director of pharmacy there and headed up the operational

[00:05:19] activation of the entire hospital but also implemented a very challenging but amazing

[00:05:26] closed loop medicine management system as the first in the UK based on the US system.

[00:05:31] I have now left that project because we did it and it was an incredible experience

[00:05:37] and I'm now doing some independent work and delighted to have started the Escapius project

[00:05:43] with my two esteemed colleagues here.

[00:05:48] Thank you Francine, I look forward to hearing more from you about the closed loop

[00:05:53] medication management system that you implemented.

[00:05:56] So just before we go into that, Patrick, where does your passion for medication safety come from?

[00:06:02] Yeah, actually I'm like Francine and Pat I am a veteran in nurse care and especially in

[00:06:09] nurse care IT.

[00:06:10] I spend the first 20 years of my career in medical imaging actually where I started

[00:06:17] with analog environments or film based radiology and I can say that I actively contributed

[00:06:24] to the digital transformation of radiology so I really went through the digitization

[00:06:30] and all organizations needs to adapt.

[00:06:33] And about in 2016 I was recruited by one of the leading pharmacy automation vendor

[00:06:41] where I had a leadership role and so I discovered the hospital pharmacy world

[00:06:46] and discovered, was really surprised that actually the hospital pharmacy and the

[00:06:51] medication management area in hospitals is still I would say at the stone age.

[00:06:56] This might be a little bit hard word, right, but it's compared to medical imaging there is

[00:07:02] a huge gap.

[00:07:03] And so I left that company about two years ago but I felt I still can contribute to the

[00:07:09] digital transformation and automation of medication management and

[00:07:13] nurse care pharmacies and actually I met with Francine as part of my new last job

[00:07:19] and Pat and I also have come in interest and we came up with this idea to create

[00:07:24] this asclepius project and align all the people with us to basically transform the world.

[00:07:32] Thank you and maybe for to better understand the topic so the project aims to improve or just

[00:07:41] encourage the improvements in the medication space on the European level.

[00:07:45] What do we actually know about medication safety in Europe?

[00:07:50] We have some global numbers so for example the cost associated with medication errors has

[00:07:56] been estimated at 42 billion US dollars annually by the World Health Organization.

[00:08:03] Two years ago the UK created this large study that kind of described in a bit better terms

[00:08:10] what the scale of the problem in the NHS is and there's around 1,700 deaths associated

[00:08:16] errors in the UK. What about the rest of Europe? Where are we with that? Who wants to take over this one?

[00:08:26] I'll take this one for now. You've taken the 1,700 deaths words out of my mouth and I was going to

[00:08:32] bring that particular study to everyone's attention. It was done in 2018 UK wide looking at the

[00:08:41] NHS. We're still making 54 million medication administration errors a year and we're losing

[00:08:49] sadly losing quite quite a few people because of medication errors so we need to do something about

[00:08:56] this. I don't know the exact numbers of medication errors in the EU. I know Pat you've got some

[00:09:03] numbers in Germany maybe you can highlight those and then I'll get from there in terms of what

[00:09:10] I think or what we think digital transformation and medication management and automation can do to

[00:09:17] make us safer as patients. Okay thank you. Pat what would you say is the situation in Germany?

[00:09:25] Germany is very specific in terms of healthcare digitalization. There's been large

[00:09:29] investments happening on national levels to digitized hospitals so where are you in terms

[00:09:34] of medication safety? I think that the German market knows that it has to improve. We talk about

[00:09:42] 19,000 deaths per year due to medication errors not just in hospitals but also in the home

[00:09:48] situation so numbers are big enough to say that this market needs a change and needs improvement.

[00:09:55] The project that we are discussing is actually very international. There's several countries

[00:10:02] UK, France, Iceland, Belgium, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden that the members are from. You are thinking

[00:10:08] beyond just one or two countries. Absolutely we are. If you allow me to jump here there is no

[00:10:18] certain numbers and this is one of the issues. Medication errors are not always tracked and

[00:10:26] not always recorded in a significant way. Those are only estimates that we have

[00:10:34] and they vary obviously country by country but what is clear this is a significant

[00:10:40] population issue because the number of people impacted is significant.

[00:10:48] Absolutely I totally agree it's not just that medication errors happen. They can also

[00:10:56] cause harm, they cause complications, prolonged hospitalizations and consequences or costs to

[00:11:02] the healthcare system not to mention the harm for patients and their families because

[00:11:07] yeah complications have a really broad impact. So let's talk about the impact of

[00:11:12] technology. Healthcare systems are strained on several levels. Why would decision makers

[00:11:20] prioritize investing in technology for medication safety and where should they begin

[00:11:27] according to your insights and analysis? It's a great question Chaja and if I may return to what

[00:11:36] you said about the impact of medication safety and medication errors whereas readmissions

[00:11:42] and returns to theaters and therefore higher costs. If you look at the closed

[00:11:46] look management circle you have the prescribing, the verification by pharmacists,

[00:11:51] then the distribution elements everything all the logistical stuff,

[00:11:55] then we have the unit doses and the scanning at the bedside and all of these digital and

[00:12:00] automated processes have an impact on making sure that the right medication gets to the

[00:12:08] right patient at the right time in the right dose. So I understand that that can be a huge

[00:12:16] investment for hospitals but reducing harm to patients at any element and any time during

[00:12:23] the medication journey is absolutely key. So if we look at the various elements of that

[00:12:29] medication journey a lot of hospitals are already electronically prescribing which

[00:12:35] has a huge impact on picking the right medication and as a safety impact and verification by

[00:12:40] pharmacists in the real time but I think that scanning at the bedside which involves individually barcoded

[00:12:49] unit doses, medications not only tablets and capsules but also infusions and injections

[00:12:54] and nose drops and all the other formulations is absolutely key that is done at the bedside

[00:13:02] and for that we do need a certain level of digital transformation and digital processes

[00:13:09] and automated processes as well. And then we make it safer but we also make it more efficient

[00:13:16] and we are less reliant on the workforce and we all know that there is a global workforce crisis

[00:13:22] which is something we can talk about for a long time and luckily I think not to forget

[00:13:28] sustainability is absolutely key and it's a real relevant topic moving forward globally and

[00:13:36] across the EU and these processes reduce medication waste and therefore make our processes and our

[00:13:42] systems more sustainable as well. If I may add something to this, it's not just about

[00:13:50] making things safer and having track of what medication is used where and when

[00:13:55] or due to the shortages that we face in Europe and having a transparency over the whole chain of

[00:14:01] medication makes us using the medication in the right way more efficiently. We do not throw

[00:14:06] medication away so medications where we have shortages are they are used for the right patient

[00:14:13] for the right treatment and this also improves the medication therapy within the hospital. So

[00:14:19] I think it's more than just about the medication safety although that's already the most

[00:14:24] and the fiercest driver for our escapist project. Before we continue maybe just a few

[00:14:29] clarifications for the listeners so when we talk about closed loop medication management and bar

[00:14:34] scope scanning that means that the nurse when she's administering the drugs scans the barcode

[00:14:40] on the patient scans the barcode on the drug to make sure that the right drug goes to the

[00:14:46] right patient in the right dose because everything is prescribed electronically and when

[00:14:51] we talk about the whole closed loop medication management for each to work several hospital systems

[00:14:57] need to be connected from the prescribing system to the pharmacy system to the pharmacy robot

[00:15:02] stock management there's ward cabinets sometimes that are involved in this whole story clinical

[00:15:08] decision support systems that are integrated in the prescribing system so a whole range of

[00:15:15] systems that basically hospitals need to to have in order for all this to work and in case

[00:15:22] that hospitals want to start somewhere and don't just have one monolith hospital system that takes

[00:15:31] care of everything laboratories patient record observations medications where would you suggest

[00:15:38] that hospitals or decision makers start when they think about improving a medication safety

[00:15:47] workforce efficiency and sustainability that you mentioned because sometimes it goes gradually we

[00:15:52] especially see that in the UK it started with epma now it's going to the electronic

[00:15:57] prescription service and it might go to closed loop medication management next as a kind of

[00:16:03] national requirement or desire followed by investments as well what we did at Cleveland

[00:16:10] Kinney which I didn't really elaborate on was go live with a big bang because we were a new hospital

[00:16:16] and you may have made just as well it was a totally paperless and fully digital hospital

[00:16:22] you may just as well implement the entire system at once very different from a transformation

[00:16:28] process to from an existing situation and then it is about deciding your rights are where what to

[00:16:35] tackle first and you are right in the UK they have looked at electronic prescribing they've

[00:16:40] done that in the Netherlands as well and other countries that is something that absolutely

[00:16:47] needed to be tackled first there are so many prescribing errors being made but then secondly

[00:16:53] there are a lot of administration errors being made so in my opinion the administration side

[00:17:00] the safe secure storage and picking and then scanning at the bedside is something is the only

[00:17:07] way to really close that loop on and reduce those medication errors when it comes to efficiencies

[00:17:15] and traceability as well it's absolutely key that we digitalize and automate our distribution

[00:17:22] and logistical processes within the hospital as well and it's a matter of what you want to

[00:17:28] prioritize first whether safety is the top of your list of priorities or whether efficiencies

[00:17:35] and less reliance on the workforce is the list the top of the list of your priorities and then

[00:17:40] of course as Patrick also or Pat also said sustainability is is an absolutely key topic at

[00:17:46] the moment so it is a little bit up to where the hospital's priorities lie but I would say that safety

[00:17:54] and efficiencies are probably the top of the list and then if you look at the closed loop cycle

[00:18:00] then you know where to start and what processes you need to automate and digitalize first

[00:18:06] you to start with something is much better than having nothing that's the principle here

[00:18:12] sorry Pat you go ahead no that's the thing I already would jump in in 1996 I was working in a

[00:18:19] hospital pharmacy where they did have an electronic health record system already in the 90s

[00:18:24] they did have something like a medication management system but there was no closed loop

[00:18:28] or there was no digital closed loop what they did was is create a closed loop by a doctors and

[00:18:35] pharmacists working together on establishing the best medication therapy by talking to each other

[00:18:42] they registered all the medication that has been given to a patient not by scanning because of

[00:18:47] that time Doug Ernaw-Bakot's yet so what they did was they had unit doses but they had unit doses

[00:18:53] made with a sticker the sticker when the medication was administered by the nurse was

[00:18:58] put into the patient record a paper record and this paper record was then transformed

[00:19:02] into the health record system by data typists so even when it's not fully digitalized and it's

[00:19:09] not optimal it all depends okay you have a process you can work in the process you can optimize a

[00:19:15] process and key element in this is the knowledge that medication safety is for the benefit of all

[00:19:21] and secondly the working groups have to work together like the doctors the nurses and the

[00:19:25] pharmacists so it depends a bit on on the situation of a hospital or a country where

[00:19:30] it stands and where to begin but since it's a loop it doesn't matter where you begin you will

[00:19:34] end up with the whole loop yeah eventually definitely you have a network from several

[00:19:42] countries in europe what can you share in terms of how what's the variability in medication

[00:19:48] management across europe what are the country specific challenges that you may have uncovered

[00:19:55] when you all got together are the members mostly coming in from private hospitals or is it also

[00:20:02] public hospitals because that also makes a huge difference in terms of how the hospital is financed

[00:20:08] and how much they can invest in new technologies i think the difference between what community and

[00:20:14] public hospitals private hospitals is of less importance since we all challenge we have

[00:20:20] the same challenges in this countries might be a little bit ahead when it comes to fulfilling

[00:20:26] the close to medication management as i said in the Netherlands we had unidose management already

[00:20:31] in the 90s we had legislation for e-prescribing coming in 2014 that didn't mean that then only

[00:20:38] then the hospital started to e-prescribe because i think almost 50 percent of the hospitals were

[00:20:44] already on e-prescribing but this new legislation catalyzed and accelerated the implementation of

[00:20:51] closed of medication management and if you look at a country like Germany where they

[00:20:57] the former minister of health has published a new hospital future act acknowledging that

[00:21:03] digitalization is of key importance and that all the people within the hospital

[00:21:08] all the professionals have to work together and supported this new law or this new act by

[00:21:14] massive funding which made it possible for many hospitals to invest into the right

[00:21:21] resources that were needed things like so software or being at hardware and so the

[00:21:27] funding was also there it doesn't come easily of course but having the law and legislation

[00:21:33] catalyzes and having the funding makes it actionable yeah that from the Netherlands and

[00:21:39] Germany but perhaps francin and and patrick can complete this for product and other countries

[00:21:45] yeah i do see that there are two two general methods of dispensing medication and i would

[00:21:53] call it the first one the traditional one where basically the central pharmacy is delivering

[00:21:59] packs of medication to the wards and the nurses are preparing themselves the patient treatment

[00:22:06] before administration is the traditional method and and the preparation work is done by nurses

[00:22:13] of being interrupted and basically creating the possibility of medication erogs some countries

[00:22:21] i think pat and francin you may say that uk and germany for instance are countries where

[00:22:26] this method is still the dominant method the other method we talked already a little bit about

[00:22:32] that the closed loop based on unit dose on our patient specific therapies and started in the

[00:22:37] nordics also in in france and benelux and here we see that the role of the pharmacy is quite

[00:22:42] different it's more important all the preparation of patient specific therapies is done in the

[00:22:47] central pharmacy which leaves actually the opportunity to automate to automate that

[00:22:53] preparation and dispense into the wards only the patient specific therapy is ready to administered

[00:23:00] by the nurses so what it's almost a philosophical situation between people or pharmacists leading

[00:23:07] towards the unit dose patient specific dispensing and the other countries and in some countries

[00:23:13] like in belgium where i am from this is now by law where you need to to dispense patient

[00:23:18] specific unit doses so it's very valuable actually stay between those two methods and some countries

[00:23:25] especially in the in the sort of europe are transitioning progressively into the unit dose

[00:23:32] dispensing and how do you see that this whole transition could further be encouraged

[00:23:39] across europe like how are you going to do that with your project that actually one of the main

[00:23:47] obstacle is the lack of standardization the lack of harmonization not only on workflows and works a bit

[00:23:54] but also on on information if you take for instance the very basic building block which

[00:24:00] is a medication database every single country in the world and in europe has his own medication

[00:24:07] database and not only the medication themselves are different so like the names or the dosage

[00:24:14] but also the structure of those database is different so from a vendor point of view whatever

[00:24:20] you are software vendor or a robot manufacturer you need to adapt and recreate every time a local

[00:24:27] environment discreet complexity discreet additional cost and also risk into the deployment of those

[00:24:35] projects so one of the goal of of us clip use is to to contribute to the identification of harmonized

[00:24:46] best practices and promote those best practices through tenders for instance to push the industry

[00:24:52] towards a standardization and some simply a project to deploy okay i think sorry if i may go ahead

[00:25:01] yeah just i think touching on what pat and patrick have already said it isn't really about the difference

[00:25:09] between private and public hospitals it is really about local regulations as well for example we're

[00:25:17] held back a little bit in in the NHS in the uk i must say that NHS is loved by many people

[00:25:23] but there are digitization or electronic prescribing is not a regulation at the moment so

[00:25:29] it's not being driven by by the government it is driven but it's not it doesn't need to be implemented

[00:25:34] by law same for aseptic production we have a very stringent regulatory body the mhra that sort of

[00:25:41] prevents us from awarding longer expiry dates and therefore it's really operationally very complex

[00:25:48] to implement these unit dose productions for infusions but then taking back to going back

[00:25:54] to the membership of the aslapeus project i think what is really key is that we have invited people

[00:26:01] and they're gladly accepted to be part of this that are chief pharmacists in large hospitals with a

[00:26:07] tremendous amount of experience and also country-wide experience so some of us are presidents or

[00:26:16] ex presidents or key stakeholders in a professional organizations on a country level

[00:26:21] so we did go about carefully choosing and inviting people so that we have a good representation across

[00:26:29] europe so this is not something that we're coming up with ourselves of course this is our initiative

[00:26:35] but it is very much supported by some really key influential chief pharmacists and other key

[00:26:43] stakeholders do you already have any milestones set up that you would like to achieve we have

[00:26:51] defined the three subgroups to work on so one is on the harmonization of the workflows so the processes

[00:26:58] standardizing them and and making them happen and it is in this one where franzine takes the

[00:27:06] lead in together with some other hospital pharmacists chief of pharmacists to work on that

[00:27:13] patrick is taking the lead in defining and but also measuring relevant kpis where we can see

[00:27:20] impact of those closed-loop medication management processes and compare them to each other the

[00:27:27] true belief behind this is of course that what you can measure you can improve

[00:27:32] and i'm in the lead of the return on investment subgroup where we try to monetize the effect

[00:27:39] of having a closed-loop medication management implemented to be used by either the ones

[00:27:45] that have already invested in it but mainly also for those who are going to invest in it and have to

[00:27:50] convince for instance their management that it does make sense to go into closed-loop medication

[00:27:55] management and instead of trying to to invent the wheel all by themselves for all these three

[00:28:01] initiatives we will spread the lessons learned and the best practices over the european

[00:28:06] countries of the european participants so what has been the most difficult thing for you

[00:28:11] so far in convincing the decision makers about the importance of this because that's

[00:28:17] that's the thing right digital transformation there's always this challenge of first convincing

[00:28:22] the decision makers then you have to get the buy-in from the end user so it's a it's a big thing

[00:28:27] yeah we were really positively surprised when we started to reach out to those to those leaders

[00:28:34] and opinion leaders in our respective network we were really positively surprised by the by

[00:28:40] their response and so actually almost everyone agreed to participate and now we have already

[00:28:46] achieved a couple of meetings including a face-to-face kickoff meeting at during the european association

[00:28:53] of hospital pharmacist congress in in bordeaux the the main challenge that we face is getting

[00:29:00] people to take this this load this work on top of the of their all the common duties that

[00:29:07] they need to accomplish for the responsibilities that their respective responsibility so it or can we

[00:29:14] get them to free up the time and so we can really create that solid foundation of of

[00:29:23] information and deliverable that's really i think the most challenging part of of the project

[00:29:29] okay is would anyone else like to add anything

[00:29:34] yes i can add to that this taking this work on top of the daily routine is something that every

[00:29:40] hospital pharmacist doctor nurse faces also in reality a implementation project for

[00:29:45] close of medication management comes on top of treating the patients doing the prescribing

[00:29:50] preparing the medication so having the time free to do these kind of projects and to do them

[00:30:00] seriously is something that we also would like to help out with and we have within our

[00:30:07] asclepia initiative over 12 people joining us and also providing those who want to implement with

[00:30:17] support knowledge experiences best practices and later on also tooling and so it's helping

[00:30:24] helping them out on all kinds of levels not just the strategic level but also on

[00:30:28] let's say the more routine boring but still most importantly the implementation parts

[00:30:34] that you get it done and get it running yeah Francine which part was the most difficult at

[00:30:40] the Cleveland clinic in London what was the biggest challenge of them all and maybe you can also

[00:30:46] talk about the impact in the end on the results and on patient safety that you've

[00:30:51] then observed when the clinic was opened to four patients yeah i think we can look at

[00:30:58] a couple of categories but one of them was because if you want to truly implement this 24-7

[00:31:03] real-time verification real-time making infusions etc you need to be open 24-7 so to work to

[00:31:09] workforce plan around this was extremely difficult but we did it and we found the right

[00:31:15] people to work overnight and to make sure that we could run 24-7 so the model that we

[00:31:21] implemented could run secondly it's about getting the people on board and teamwork so for

[00:31:28] an example is that we had our we were the first to implement automated dispensing cabinets at wards

[00:31:36] level in at the in the perioperative areas the anesthetists found that very difficult

[00:31:41] but it was about having good conversations with them convincing them hold their hands

[00:31:46] whilst we were going live to make sure that these processes do actually work in their areas and

[00:31:51] they're now really enthusiastic and then thirdly again teamwork the nurses really needed to get on

[00:31:58] board they we took away the making of infusions from them because we brought that back to pharmacy

[00:32:04] in order to create those infusion unit doses they found that difficult they thought we were

[00:32:09] taking some pieces of work away from them and then secondly to get good compliance of barcode

[00:32:16] scanning at the bedside and also to make them use the automated dispensing cabinets in the correct

[00:32:21] way was difficult as well so training holding hands at the elbow support is absolutely key

[00:32:28] to make this successful now when it comes to safety aspects we are currently reviewing

[00:32:36] all the medication the reported medication incidents over the last two years now two years

[00:32:40] post opening and we have some preliminary results to present at Hymns in Rome in the next couple of

[00:32:47] weeks so yeah but we're still there's still a lot of analyzing to be done can you already share

[00:32:54] any of the results that are going to be presented there

[00:32:57] um

[00:33:02] either rough numbers we've had about approaching a million bedside medication administrations

[00:33:12] we have had quite a significant number of maybe not administering in time incident because of

[00:33:20] but particularly the beginning because of everyone getting used to the processes and therefore

[00:33:25] maybe not things being ready in time very limited to time critical medicines we made sure that those

[00:33:31] were there at the right time but if it comes to the six r so the right dose right documentation the

[00:33:38] right patient the right meds and the right route they have missed one we probably or most likely

[00:33:44] but i'm still analyzing have had two incorrect administrations which is if you compare that

[00:33:50] to the e-pro report in the NHS that was published in 2018 we you cannot really compare it it's it's

[00:33:59] so low that it's it's pretty pretty significant so yes it does work but it's it does need a cultural

[00:34:07] shift to be able to operate this more i could add that in the midst of zero so we did also a

[00:34:12] closer medication management project that by the prescribing part we were able to reduce

[00:34:17] the medication errors by 50 percent and by the bedside verification we could even reduce it by

[00:34:23] another 50 of the remaining 50 percent so we reduced by the project alone 75 percent of all the

[00:34:30] medication errors which is also a significant number driving us enough to keep doing this is

[00:34:36] good work thank you everyone for all the thoughts that have already been shared is there anything

[00:34:43] else that you would like to add before we conclude the the discussion anything that you think might

[00:34:51] move the needle further yeah maybe as a conclusion i'd like to come back on on the sentence

[00:34:59] that once in summarize as our mission make an impact really the the goal of this project

[00:35:06] a Sclepius project is really to to drive to drive the change and initiate actually an acceleration

[00:35:14] of the adoption of digital transformation and automation in the medication management at the end

[00:35:19] providing higher patient safety and better efficiency so resulting in a positive contribution

[00:35:27] for everyone to really make an impact and we want to bring all good all all good will

[00:35:33] on board to drive this across across europe you've been listening to faces of digital health a proud

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