Leveraging Smart Pump Event Log Data to Understand Medication Events: An Informaticist's Guide

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Quality Improvement
• Patient Safety Research
• Health Informatics

Background:

• High-reliability organizations (HROs) apply principles to enhance safety in complex, high-risk settings.
• Medication safety, particularly intravenous administration, is a critical area within healthcare requiring robust error mitigation strategies.
• Intravenous smart pumps generate event logs that contain valuable patient safety data but are often unusable in their raw format.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe a specific, methodological process for transforming intravenous smart pump event log data into a user-friendly format.
• To provide a guide for healthcare professionals to leverage event log data for improved patient safety.
• To foster innovation in patient safety by utilizing objective data from the point of care.

Main Methods:

• The study outlines a two-phase process for data transformation.
• Programming code is provided in supplementary files to facilitate the transformation of event log data.
• The methodology focuses on making raw smart pump data accessible and interpretable.

Main Results:

• A user-friendly format for intravenous smart pump event log data can be achieved through the described process.
• The transformed data provides objective insights directly from the point of care.
• Examples of data utilization are provided to demonstrate practical applications.

Conclusions:

• The developed process enables the effective use of intravenous smart pump event logs for enhancing medication safety.
• This methodological guide supports the application of a high-reliability organization mindset in healthcare settings.
• Making event log data accessible can drive innovations in patient safety and quality improvement.