Catharsis Medical Technology, Inc. Introduces Major Advancement in Medication Error Prevention At the Point of Administration.

Business/Technology Editors

MOULTONBORO, N.H.--(BW HealthWire)--Sept 29, 2000

PatientGuard(TM) product is demonstrated at IEEE 1073

Standards meeting

Catharsis Medical Technology, Inc. (CMT) announced today that it introduced its PatientGuard product to the healthcare informatics industry with a product demonstration at the recent meeting of the IEEE 1073 Standards Committee. PatientGuard(TM) is the first product designed to take real time data from any infusion pump to help prevent medication errors at the point of administration. The prevention of medication errors is a major focus of the Institute of Medicine report "To Err is Human - Building a Safer Health System".

PatientGuard captures actual drug administration data at the point of care, to check medication administration errors. All infusion pump administered drugs are automatically and continuously monitored. Oral and syringe drugs can also be entered. It interfaces to existing systems as an open system, with an HL7 interface for HIS data, and an IEEE 1073 interface to medical devices, allowing the use of existing systems and networks. PatientGuard can run with any legacy infusion pump, so long as it has an RS-232 or IEEE 1073 port. PatientGuard interfaces to a drug interaction database to monitor drug-drug, drug-disease, drug allergy, and drug dosing in real time. PatientGuard serves as the last line of defense for safe drug administration.

The IEEE 1073 Committee develops standards for data communications for patient connected bedside medical devices. CMT demonstrated PatientGuard to the IEEE 1073 Committee to show one of the first applications specifically designed to enhance patient safety using standardized medical device data. Attendees at the demonstration included representatives from hospitals, patient monitoring vendors, and infusion pump vendors.

"PatientGuard is designed to use IEEE 1073 format data from infusion pumps, enabling use of data from any existing or new infusion pump, " said Elizabeth Mroz, CEO of CMT. "PatientGuard enables clinicians to safeguard patients and themselves during actual drug administration at the point of care with minimal change to their present work processes. PatientGuard was designed to protect patients, be user friendly, and cost effective. PatientGuard can be implemented on a stand-alone basis and does not require any other hospital information systems. The impact of PatientGuard on improving medication administration safety is expected to be quite dramatic and important. CMT will be announcing an implementation of PatientGuard at a major Midwestern hospital in the near future."

Catharsis Medical Technology, Inc. (CMT) is dedicated to enhancing patient safety and improving the quality of patient care by developing and implementing information technology products that protect patients.

For further information about PatientGuard visit www.catharsismedical.com.