Using informatics to improve medical device safety and systems thinking.

The infusion pump informatics (IPI) system represents an innovative collaboration among a community of practice and researchers at Purdue University; the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC) and the Regenstrief Center for Healthcare Engineering (RCHE). This six-year-old decision support system was started to address needs for better management of smart infusion pumps. IPI supports a systems approach to continuous improvement in the safety of medications administered with smart infusion pumps. Its design has been user driven and includes two essential components. The first component, developed by a RCAC team led by a senior research scientist (A.C.C.), receives data uploaded from smart infusion pumps, provides secure Internet access for clinicians, and enables analyses requested by its users. Clinicians using IPI are able to navigate using intuitive, point-and-click technology to execute complex analytics and receive real-time online reports that can be configured to their specification and downloaded in a CSV file for customized analyses offline (Figure 1). The second component of IPI is CatalyzeCare, which is a web-based hub supporting communities of practice (i.e., groups of people who share a concern, set of problems, or passion about a topic and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis).1 The IPI community shares infusion pump alert data, drug libraries, and domain knowledge to enable interhospital comparative analyses and exchange of expertise. Since its inception in 2008, the community has grown to include representatives from more than 50 hospitals. The following cases, which were provided by community members, illustrate how IPI is being used to improve performance in areas recommended as priorities for smart infusion pump implementation and use.2,3 Using Informatics to Improve Medical Device Safety And Systems Thinking