Omnicell designs an elegant prescription solution for Great River Medical Center
Posted By Karen Roberts
Senior Partner Marketing Manager
It’s always a thrill when I learn about inventive and advanced solutions our partners have developed using our products and core technology. Omnicell’s intelligent systems solutions for healthcare, built on the Microsoft platform, including Windows Embedded, successfully addresses the workflow and problems faced by pharmacy, nursing, materials management and IT departments. Our recently published story—and corresponding video—show the highlights of this truly innovative solution; here, we’ll go a little deeper into the technology.
The Omnicell G4 medication management solution and Omnicell Anesthesia Workstations have been built with Windows Embedded Standard 7, which provides a strong platform to help streamline workflow and increase efficiency. Great River Medical Center is just one of the many customers who have benefited from the powerful platform designed to manage drug inventory in real time.
In the Great River Medical Center the pharmacy utilizes the Omnicell G4 inventory management carousel, which runs Windows Embedded Standard 7, to automate the retrieval of medication from shelves while tracking inventory. A high-speed unit dose packager speeds the preparation of individual doses of medication, saving additional prep time for pharmacists. When inventory drops below a preset level, the Omnicell WorkflowRx software automatically reorders the medication from the wholesaler. The carousel takes up about one-fifth of the floor space of the old shelves, but stores three times as much medication.
To ensure secure medication delivery on each patient floor of the Great River Medical Center, nurses first identify themselves to the G4 system by touching a finger or thumb to the biometric scanner attached to the cabinet. Then they use a bar-code scanner to scan and verify the medication as it comes out of the cabinet. They scan the medication again at the bedside, matching it to the patient’s bracelet to confirm accuracy. Nurses save waiting time and prevent bottlenecks by queuing up their medication orders from any connected terminal using Omnicell’s Anywhere RN software solution. They then quickly receive items from the cabinet on their floor. As medication is checked out, the cabinets automatically send restocking orders to the pharmacy system to ensure a ready supply of necessary medication on patient floors.
In operating and procedure rooms at the Great River Medical Center, the Omnicell Anesthesia Workstations track and monitor all medications, including controlled substances administered during surgeries and procedures such as catheterization. Staff access these cabinets, which run Windows Embedded Standard 7, using a biometric scanner. The cabinets distribute single doses of controlled substances, reducing the risk of diversion and saving time on inventory checks and manual sign-outs.
The U.S. healthcare industry will experience major changes over the next five to 10 years. The automated medication management and pharmacy support solutions from Omnicell offer a solid foundation for future success, from assisting with communication with medication wholesalers to managing operational efficiency in the operating room. To read about more innovative embedded solutions for healthcare, visit our healthcare industry page, and read more about the Great River solution in our article.