Thomson Reuters's NeoFax deployed at the University of Kansas Hospital for electronic neonatal drug dosing

The University of Kansas Hospital has deployed NeoFax(®) from Thomson Reuters to provide physicians, nurses, and pharmacy staff in its neonatal intensive care unit with electronic drug dosing, interaction checking, and reference information.

The University of Kansas Hospital is a 575-bed academic medical center that specializes in heart disease, cancer treatment and prevention, neurology, kidney disease, urology, liver and kidney transplantation, and pain management. It has a licensed 35-bed, level-III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) providing care to infants with severe prematurity and respiratory, gastrointestinal or cardiac anomalies. The hospital chose to deploy the electronic version of NeoFax to reduce the chance of medication errors.

"Prior to deployment, nurses administering drugs to patients would check the patient chart at the bedside, go to the drug cabinet to withdraw the medication, go to the counter to use the dosing book to check the dose, and then go to the bedside to administer the medicine," said Leasa Clemons, BSN, RN. "With NeoFax Online, we bring the medication to the bedside. With the bedside computer we re-check the patient chart, check the patient's gestational age and the dosing, and administer."

The new workflow eliminates several steps that can lead to medication errors and provides online dosing calculations that account for infants' ever-changing weight.

NeoFax Online also assists with the hospital's ongoing infection control initiative. Books are difficult to clean and can carry and transfer infections. Removing contact with a book during the administration of medication eliminates this potential source of infection within the NICU.

NeoFax Online is available via the internet and through intranet deployments. Handheld versions are available for Palm and Windows Mobile-based PDAs.

The University of Kansas Hospital worked with Form Web Productions, a Kansas City-based company, to integrate NeoFax with their NICU systems.