Med One Blog

Advancements in technology have made our hospitals and medical facilities much safer. However, when human behavior is added into the mix, this can derail even the best efforts to improve patient safety. In many cases, human error is to blame for some of the most prevalent problems with infusion pumps. Let's take a closer look at three common problems with this type of hospital equipment and how they can easily be prevented.

Although there are two basic classes of infusion pumps -- large volume and small volume -- there are actually several different other types of IV pumps within those classes. The purpose of infusion pumps is to dispense fluids or medications into a patient's body in a controlled way. Patient-controlled analgesia pumps are a specific type of IV pump that allows the patient to take an active role in the management of their own pain. In today's post, we'll offer an introduction to PCA pumps and discuss the advantages of IV pumps with PCA modules can provide.

Your hospital or healthcare facility likely relies on medical equipment like infusion pumps to ensure that your patients receive the best possible care. The market for this equipment continues to grow, and by 2024, it's expected to be valued at $5,016 million on a global scale. That said, any facility doesn’t want to pay for the unnecessary expense of premature replacement. If you want to maintain your IV infusion pumps in good working order and maximize their lifespan, you'll want to follow these tips.

As you may be aware, infusion systems are used in countless applications within the medical field. Since they officially came into widespread use during the 1960s, infusion pumps have been used to dispense nutrients, medications, hormones, and other fluids to patients in a rapid and effective way. And since that time, advancements in this type of medical equipment have only continued to grow – as with the development of smart pumps, like the Sigma Spectrum and others which contain drug libraries and digital regulations within the pump itself to minimize errors. In this post, you can learn more about the number one medical application to administer medicine via infusion: chemotherapy. This post can serve as a helpful guide for chemotherapy patients who want to understand a bit more about how chemotherapy infusion works and what they can expect.

By Ibby Smith Stofer

One of our recent blog articles entitled 10 Years of Changes in Healthcare Sales goes over how healthcare purchasing decisions and the sales process have changed over the last 10 years. Today we will focus on some of the challenges healthcare sales will see today and in the future.

In this digital age, we rely on our wireless devices for countless daily tasks. So when a wireless option was developed to join the variety of different IV pumps used by hospitals across the nation, most saw this as a positive advancement. Since IV therapy is considered to be the quickest way to deliver fluids and medications (yielding a bioavailability absorption of 100%), the progress to the use of wireless IV pumps would make it that much easier to get patients what they need. While infusion pumps and other medical equipment typically stand alone in their operation, wireless IV pumps are able to connect to various networks and even other devices. This has made access to electronic health records and point-of-care medication systems substantially easier.

Infusion pumps can be found in virtually every hospital and healthcare facility across the nation. Many advancements have been made since these IV pumps first premiered, but the development of the smart pump may be one of the most notable in the modern age. In 2013, 72.9% of all U.S. hospitals reported using smart pumps, a significant increase from just six years earlier, when only 44% of these facilities utilized the smart technology developed by IV pump manufacturers. Improved patient safety and easy integration with existing systems can largely account for this increase in widespread use.

I realized the other day while speaking with a business partner that I have been engaged in sales and support to healthcare providers for over 40 years. That was both exhilarating and depressing. How does one stay in one career for over half of their lifetime? Reflecting on where sales and healthcare providers are today versus way back at the beginning of my career, I found the last decade to be the most significant.

Since the 1960s, infusion pumps have gained widespread use in hospitals and healthcare facilities. They're an excellent way to administer fluids and medications quickly and accurately, which makes them popular in both emergency situations and for chronic conditions. But while you may be quite familiar with the sight of IV pumps that remain stationary in hospital rooms, you might not know quite as much about the other different types of IV pumps -- for example, ambulatory infusion pumps.

By Ibby Smith Stofer

A lot has changed in how healthcare facilities evaluate and determine which products and services will ultimately be approved. Today, purchasing decisions are often made through formal committees coming to an agreement on what is the best fit for the needs of the facility. In healthcare, the sale of medical devices or services can be instantly killed by the committee that must approve projects and expenditures.