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BWH was one of five organizations to receive a Health IT Innovation Award from CMIO magazine. The award spotlights information technology innovations that make care more patient-centered, effective and affordable.
The winning project was the result of collaboration among the departments of Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy at BWH and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as Information Systems.
The team submitted a patient safety project to implement a closed-loop medication administration process, with features to address the complex scheduling of chemotherapy treatment plans. A closed-loop system is a way of preventing certain medication errors by using technology to verify the medication and dose are accurate at the time it is administered.
The linking system ensures that physicians and patients are able to adhere to the tightly orchestrated schedule that chemotherapy treatment plans require, representing an additional layer of safety, beyond CPOE and barcode medication verification systems.
"Oncology practice, especially the administration of chemotherapy, is laden with high risk potentially harmful interventions in pursuit of positive patient outcomes," said Carolyn Hayes, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, executive director of Oncology Nursing and Clinical Services. "It was a privilege to help develop a system that mitigates the risk and strengthens the outcomes, for both clinicians and patients."
CMIO magazine focuses on empowering, educating and supporting medical and health care executive leadership to advance, integrate and leverage clinical information systems to bring evidence-based medicine to the point of care.