Telepharmacy system for remote supervision of pharmacy technicians in hospital decreases likelihood of medication errors, increases safety of process

The culmination of some telepharmacy work out of Kansas, finally published, highlighted earlier by this blog! An article in the newest AJHP details an interesting usage of telepharmacy:

Summary. Telepharmacy hardware and software were acquired, and an inspection camera was placed in a biological safety cabinet to allow the pharmacy technician to take digital photographs at various stages of the chemotherapy preparation process. Once the pharmacist checks the medication vials’ agreement with the work label, the technician takes the product into the biological safety cabinet, where the appropriate patient is selected from the pending work list, a queue of patient orders sent from the pharmacy information system. The technician then scans the bar code on the vial. Assuming the bar code matches, the technician photographs the work label, vials, diluents and fluids to be used, and the syringe (before injecting the contents into the bag) along with the vial. The pharmacist views all images as a part of the final product-checking process. This process allows the pharmacist to verify that the correct quantity of medication was transferred from the primary source to a secondary container without being physically present at the time of transfer.

Conclusion. Telepharmacy and bar coding provide a means to improve the accuracy of chemotherapy preparation by decreasing the likelihood of using the incorrect product or quantity of drug. The system facilitates the reading of small product labels and removes the need for a pharmacist to handle contaminated syringes and vials when checking the final product.

Sounds promising -- and a great new method of lowering medication errors in the absence of a pharmacist, as well as costs in pharmacies, though if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know remote verification of pharmacy technician work in hospitals via telecommunications isn't entirely new.