[EASYSCAN: French pilot study for securing drug administration by barcode reading]

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Technology
• Patient Safety
• Clinical Informatics

Background:

• Medication errors during administration pose a significant risk to patient safety.
• BarCode Medication Administration (BCMA) systems aim to reduce these errors through bedside verification.
• The EASYSCAN system, integrated with an electronic Medication Administration Record (e-MAR), was evaluated for its efficacy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the performance of the EASYSCAN BCMA system in a French medicine ward.
• To assess the success rates of patient identity and medication verification using BCMA.
• To measure the impact of BCMA on medication administration time and gather nurse satisfaction data.

Main Methods:

• A prospective observational study was conducted over seven weeks.
• The study involved 182 medication administrations, comparing use with and without the EASYSCAN system.
• Data collected included BCMA success rates, administration times, and nurse satisfaction via questionnaire.

Main Results:

• Patient identity verification succeeded in 77% of administrations; drug scanning succeeded in 65%.
• Primary failure reasons included missing drug datamatrix (81%) and system error messages (14%).
• Average administration time increased significantly to 4.68 minutes per patient with EASYSCAN, compared to 2.87 minutes without.

Conclusions:

• The initial version of the EASYSCAN system demonstrated specific performance limitations.
• Enhancements in hardware, software, and nursing practices are required for future implementation.
• Continued experimentation is necessary to optimize this BCMA system in the French healthcare context.