PFI-RP: Partnerships for Patient Safety: Utilization-Driven Management of Critical Medical Equipment

George Washington University, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) project relates to the improvement of patient safety and hospital efficiency through the advent of utilization-driven equipment management techniques, specifically for infusion pumps. Infusion pumps serve a vital role in administering treatment to hospitalized patients, but are prone to damage through regular use, resulting in medication errors that harm patients and generate substantial excess healthcare costs. Presently, infusion pumps are serviced according to predetermined time intervals that do not account for variations in device usage, allowing potentially hazardous devices to remain in use between inspections and wasting resources on excessive maintenance of functional devices. Through a multidisciplinary collaboration between university, industry, and healthcare partners, this project will develop a system that makes utilization-driven equipment management practicable in hospitals. The proposed system will facilitate early detection of damaged infusion pumps, thereby reducing the likelihood of costly medication errors and saving thousands of patients from harm each year. In addition to increasing patient safety, the system will address the growing demand among healthcare technology managers for data-driven maintenance and procurement strategies that reduce equipment-related costs and increase the value of care. The proposed project seeks to advance the state-of-the-art in healthcare technology management by developing and advancing towards commercialization a system that leverages newly available sources of infusion pump utilization data, in conjunction with advanced survival analysis and reliability engineering techniques, to formulate optimized utilization-driven equipment management programs accounting for device risk and hospital resource constraints. Technical challenges that will be addressed include (i) knowledge gaps related to the precise nature, variability, and decision implications of the relationship existing between infusion pump utilization and reliability, and (ii) technical barriers pertaining to the implementation of scalable data analysis and construction of a proof-of-concept software tool that will enable end users to formulate optimal infusion pump management programs tailored to their organizational needs. This translational research will result in the creation of data-driven adaptive knowledge specific to healthcare technology management and generalizable to the broader reliability engineering and operations research disciplines. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.