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DEVELOPMENT OF A COMPUTER APPLICATION TO REDUCE THE RISK OF ERRORS IN RECONSTITUTION OF CYTOTOXIC DRUGS

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European Statement

Production and Compounding

Why was it done?

The preparation of cytotoxic drugs perfusions can be accompanied by errors that can be fatal to some patients. Several methods were tested to minimise the risk of errors associated with reconstitution of cytotoxic perfusions (camera, HPLC, analytical balance, the presence of a second technician to monitor his colleague). All of these methods can be expensive and are not available to all hospital pharmacists.

What was done?

We present a simple and effective method that we have developed in our hospital to solve the problem of reconstitution errors.

How was it done?

Errors of cytotoxic drugs reconstitution can have catastrophic consequences for patients. Some studies have found that the incidence of major and minor errors were, respectively, 0.19% and 0.26%. Reconstitution control methods are numerous but not always accessible to all hospital pharmacists and preparers, particularly in developing countries.

This work involves the development of a computer application developed from an Open Source voice recognition software. The daily chemotherapy protocols are entered in the application that dictates to a technician the protocol prescribed by the physician, product by product, for all patients. The technician performs the cytotoxic preparations in the order in the centralised pharmaceutical unit for the preparation of cytotoxic drugs and he communicates with the application manually or by speaking.

The application begins with the patient’s ID, name and surname, the first drug, the dosage, the dilution solution and the volume of this solution. Then, it passes to the second product and so on. In the case of an observation, the application warns the technician to take this observation into account.

What has been achieved?

This application has helped provide better assistance to the technicians and pharmacists in the reconstitution of cytotoxic drugs, and no event or error has been detected to date.

What next?

To make a large number of reconstructions using this application to assess its effectiveness and install it in other hospitals who handle cytotoxic drugs.

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