There is interest in both the UK and Belgium in Mint Solutions' MedEye medication safety system, which has long been used in the Netherlands. Therefore, studies will be carried out in both the UK and Belgium in the coming period on the impact of the MedEye medication safety system on healthcare. In the UK, Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals Foundation Trust hospital will serve as a research centre, working closely with a research team from the University of Durham. Pharmaforce will measure the impact of MedEye on long-term care in Belgium. What exactly is MedEye?
"MedEye is a system from Dutch company Mint Solutions for automatically verifying that the right medication goes to the right people at the right time. Dispensing medication is an error-prone process. Nurses must perform many actions correctly to ensure that any mistakes made earlier in the process are also noticed," explains Gauti Reynisson, CEO of Mint Solutions. "The goal of MedEye is to help nurses avoid errors with medication and make medication recording at the bedside more efficient."
Multiple solutions
MedEye consists of several solutions:
- MedEye Nurse - helps nurses automatically monitor and record medication at the bedside.
- MedEye Patient - informs patients (and loved ones) about their medication and enables them to participate in the care process.
- MedEye Analytics - provides insight into the administration of medication throughout the hospital and helps optimise this process.
MedEye is capable of monitoring all types of medication, including infusions and injections. A key part of the solution is the MedEye pill scanner, which allows nurses to scan pills at the bedside to check the type of medication and its dosage. "70-80% of all medication administered to patients are pills," says Reynisson.
Computer vision
"The MedEye pill scanner uses computer vision to recognise pills. This is similar to the technology also used in self-driving cars. Using computer vision, the scanner can recognise pills by their appearance. This takes into account, for example, the exact diameter of the pill or the width of the break line. This allows the system to recognise and distinguish pills more accurately than humans."
However, it is not only important that the right medicine is dispensed, but also that this medicine is administered in the right dose. "Using a barcode scanner, it is possible to scan barcodes of medicines to ensure that the correct medicine is dispensed. However, this method does not allow checking the dosage of medication. For this, MedEye uses computer vision."
Hardware and software
"The solution consists of both hardware and software. The solution is integrated into the medicine cart that nurses use to bring medication around. Thus, the cart is equipped with a camera, a barcode scanner and a pill scanner with the appropriate software," Reynisson said. "This allows the nurse to control how medications are verified. This can be done by showing the medication to the camera, but also by scanning the barcode on the packaging of medication or placing the pills in the pill scanner."
The most efficient course of action depends on the specific situation. For example, in some cases it is quicker to scan a barcode, for example if the patient is only given one pill of a particular medicine. However, if a patient uses several medicines and is given, say, five pills, it is faster to use the pill scanner. Nurses make this choice themselves. "MedEye checks that all checks have been carried out as required. Only then does the system give the green light to dispense the medication."
Impact research
Studies on the impact of MedEye are being conducted in both the UK and Belgium. These studies are funded with support from the European Commission's Horizon2020 grant programme. "Both the UK's Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals Foundation Trust and Belgium's Pharmaforce have expressed interest in MedEye. However, every healthcare sector is different and uses different practices. As a result, the impact of MedEye is slightly different in the Netherlands than in other countries. With these studies, we therefore want to show what impact MedEye can realise in the UK and Belgium respectively."
More information about MedEye can be found at medeye.io.
By: Wouter Hoeffnagel
