Integrating Device Data with EMR for Better, Safer Care

Hospital executive teams are actively seeking new ways to give clinicians better access to information about their patients. Hospira, a leading provider of injectable drugs and infusion technologies, wanted to provide doctors with information about their patients’ I.V. therapy directly in the electronic medical record (EMR) systems they are using.

To do so, the company selected our Rhapsody® Integration Engine to transform and stream infusion pump data directly to EMR and barcode systems for more complete longitudinal records and enhanced patient safety.

In the past, Hospira utilized custom interfaces to achieve integration between Hospira’s MedNet I.V. medication management software and other hospital systems. The company decided to take a more modern approach and support these integrations using interoperability profiles developed by Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) – an initiative by healthcare professionals to improve the way computer systems in healthcare share information.

Hospira and its clients also benefited from the fact that Rhapsody can be deployed on the same server hardware as MedNet, reducing hardware administration costs.

The integration between the Hospira software and an EMR provides continuously updated information about a patient’s I.V. medications, enabling hospitals to document infusions more accurately and create a more comprehensive longitudinal patient record, leading to overall better care quality.

This partnership is another great example of the power of an integration engine to solve a wide range of interoperability challenges. From sharing information to supporting care coordination to leveraging existing technologies, there are many ways to utilize such a versatile solution and ultimately achieve interoperability amongst systems.