Articles
Making Medication Delivery Safer, One Dose at a Time
It's the middle of the night, you're bleary-eyed, and somebody's coughing loud enough to wake the dead. Maybe it's your child, maybe it's you, but either way, somebody needs cough syrup right now, and you can barely see the markings on the tiny plastic dosing cup. You can't really read the dosing instructions on the bottle, either, because it's dark and you can't find your glasses and you're still half asleep. There has to be a better way, right?
Incorrect dosing is a serious concern; in fact, medication safety is so important that the entire healthcare industry recognizes a standard known as the Five Rights of Medication Safety: Right Patient, Right Drug, Right Dose, Right Route, Right Time. The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies found that medical errors account for anywhere between 44,000 to 98,000 deaths annually in U.S. hospitals and that 58% of these deaths could have been prevented. (1) And that's just in hospitals; the figures don't count those middle-of-the-night medication errors that happen at home.
One way to ensure correct dosing is to provide single-dose unit packaging, but this option can be extremely costly. Packaging each dose separately increases transportation, manufacturing, and raw materials costs; it also increases energy usage and, in many cases, forces manufacturers to undergo new rounds of regulatory compliance testing and retool their production lines.
A better way of approaching single-dose delivery is to provide a syringe designed to administer the precise dosage required. Sonic’s Pick Dose syringe is easy for the user to program; if the correct dosage is 5 mL, the user sets the dial for 5 mL and, every time he or she draws the medication from the multi-dose container, 5 mL will be in the syringe, ready to go. Parents and caregivers can be assured that they're delivering the right dose, every time. And it's not just for home use---the Pick Dose syringe is ideal anywhere oral medication is delivered. Nursing homes, veterinary clinics, hospitals, and home health service providers can all benefit from this added safety measure.
Another benefit to the manufacturer is that additional testing is not required. Because the Pick Dose is not intended for prolonged storage of medications, there's no need for additional regulatory testing. The medication or other ingestible substance remains in the original package until delivery, thus ensuring regulatory compliance and maintaining product stability and packaging compatibility. There isn't even a need for branded packaging; the Pick Dose can be bundled with the multi-dose container.
A cost-effective vehicle for added patient compliance and reduced dosing errors? It almost makes those midnight treks to the medicine cabinet seem doable!
(1) - Institute of Medicine, "To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System," www.iom.edu/Reports/1999/To-Err-is-Human-Building-A-Safer-Health-System.aspx, November 1999.
