NEWS FROM NEWICON
The new smart medicine cabinets at Seinäjoki Central Hospital lower the risk of medication errors Seinäjoki Central Hospital in Finland has invested in three smart medicine cabinets that will be installed in the new facilities at the hospital’s ICU in spring 2018. The unit will continue operating normally in the old facilities until the move, and the renovation work or the installation of the smart medicine cabinet will therefore not affect the use of the premises. The investment will make the hospital’s medical services more efficient and lower the possibility of medication errors. “The smart medicine cabinet guides the nurses when collecting medicines, and it also registers all
the removals from the cabinet. This lowers the risk of medication errors and abuse, which in turn improves the safety of both the patients and the nurses. Because the medical service monitoring and reporting will become automated, the nurses will have more time to work with the patients,” says hospital pharmacist Päivi Tiippana from Seinäjoki Central Hospital. According to Tiippana, the new acquisition will improve the hospital’s medication logistics, because the smart medicine cabinets make the stock monitoring easier. The new smart medicine cabinets in the
Research data regarding automation devices in medical services NewIcon is participating in Aalto University’s DiRVa project, which seeks to gather evidence on the outcomes of digital solutions in health care. The pilot project that NewIcon is conducting in collaboration with researchers will examine how the deployment of the smart medicine cabinet affects patient safety, work processes, work efficiency, the quality of work and cost management.
Other parties involved in the DiRVA project include the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa as well as Duodecim, Klinik, Netmedi, Affecto, Pharmaceutical Information Centre and Telia. The company’s pilot projects are set to be carried out by the end of next year. The results are expected to arrive by February 2019 following the conclusion of the DiRVa project.
Second Iso-Fixu installed in Israel In August, NewIcon installed an IsoFixu storage and retrieval robot for pharmacies in a Meuhedet Pharmacy in the city of Hadera. NewIcon already delivered one storage and re-
trieval robot to a pharmacy in Jerusalem that belongs to the same chain in 2016. Meuhedet Pharmacy owns 70 pharmacies in Israel. The New Icon retailer in Israel is Gotect Ltd.
In November, Seinäjoki Central Hospital will receive a training medicine cabinet from NewIcon, helping the staff to begin using the actual smart medicine cabinet next spring.
ICU will be integrated to the hospital pharmacy’s electronic system, and ordering medicines to the ward and monitoring their best-before dates will thus become automated. This will allow the hospital pharmacy to be constantly aware of the medicine contents of each cabinet, making it possible to utilise the medicines in other wards as well, if necessary.
Medicine storage robot temporarily called Robo The hospital pharmacy of Savonlinna Central Hospital has purchased a Mega-Fixu medicine storage robot from NewIcon, and the workers at the pharmacy have temporarily named it Robo. An official name has not been decided yet. Riitta Miettunen, the pharmacy owner of the hospital pharmacy, explains that when the planning of the new premises for the hospital pharmacy was started, they wanted to move forward to the new millennium instead of going back to the old storage solution.
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