The Ann & Robert H Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago has partnered with Grifols, a global healthcare company, to advance patient and staff safety with the Grifols KIRO Oncology robotic system.
At Lurie Children’s, the Grifols KIRO Oncology system will provide precision and control during compounding of sterile IV (intravenous) chemotherapies for pediatric patients, whose smaller bodies are more sensitive to even minute variations in drug doses. The system also helps to improve compliance and environmental safety, as well as waste reduction and overall IV room operational efficiency.
“The Grifols KIRO robot enhances patient safety by performing barcoding check of all products used and gravimetric control based on the drug’s specific gravity. Its accuracy exceeds the volume demarcations on the syringe,” said Jenny Elhadary, vice president of clinical operations at Lurie Children’s. “It also provides staff safety by reducing their exposure to hazardous drugs and protecting them from repeated stress injury.”
The correct preparation of sterile individualized drug doses is a complex process. The ability to achieve exact accuracy to prescribed doses can be influenced by several factors, such as limits in the measurement precision of syringes and other equipment, natural variations in manual processing, and FDA-allowed variations in products received from manufacturers. The Grifols KIRO Oncology system is designed to address these challenges and facilitate compliance with best practices and regulations.
“Pharmacy operations have evolved to embrace the patient safety and workflow benefits of advanced medication safety technologies,” said Bill Churchill, chief pharmacy officer at Brigham & Women’s Healthcare in Boston.
“Advanced robotic systems that aid pharmacy specialists will be essential to modernizing sterile compounding processes – many of which have not significantly changed in decades. In addition to offsetting human and manufacturing variations, newer technologies can help pharmacies more efficiently handle the influx of new medications as well as the overall increase in workloads.”
