A new, safety-oriented, integrated drug administration and automated anesthesia record system

Medication errors are an important cause of patient morbidity and mortality and excessive costs, including in anesthesia. Conventional methods of inje ctable drug administration in anesthesia make little use of technology to s upport manual checking and are idiosyncratic and relatively error prone. Si milarly, conventional anesthesia records are handwritten, time-consuming to make, and often unreliable. There are automated record systems, but they d o not provide support for checking drugs. Therefore, by using a multifacete d approach based on established principles of systems design and human fact ors psychology, we have developed a system that includes trays that promote a well-organized anesthetic workspace, color- and bar-coded labeling of sy ringes, and automatic visual and auditory verification of the syringe label s by computer just before each drug administration. In addition, documentat ion of drugs administered and a traditional anesthetic case record are gene rated automatically. The system has been successfully deployed for 25 mo an d has been used by 35 anesthesiologists in 1148 diverse cases, including ca rdiopulmonary bypass procedures, heart and lung transplants, and orthopedic and otorhinolaryngologic operations. It is in daily use in a tertiary teac hing center and in a private hospital.