CytoCare: Addressing Pharmacy Issues You Face

Clinician Safety & Reduced Exposure to Hazardous Medications

It’s no secret: Pharmacists face severe exposure risks to hazardous, toxic agents. Inhalation, ingestion, and skin contact through needlesticks or other critical mistakes can be extremely harmful.

You’ve always been at risk. Now you can effectively and comprehensively* protect yourself.

Features that ensure reduced exposure:

• Self-contained, negative pressure, ISO 5 air handling system
• Eliminates handling of chemotherapy and other hazardous drugs by pharmacists and technicians
• Automated waste management
• Comprehensive Protection not only addresses contamination issues, but goes beyond the so-called "Closed-System Transfer Devices" by addressing sterility, medication errors, and dose accuracy.
• CytoCare addresses the recent NIOSH alert about hazardous drugs that begins: "WARNING: Working with or near hazardous drugs in health care settings may cause skin rashes, infertility, miscarriage, birth defects, and possibly leukemia or other cancers."

Improved Patient Safety & Increased Accuracy

Especially in cancer treatment, dose calculations errors, prescription errors, drug exchange errors have extremely high potential for adverse consequences to patients. Cross contamination during IV admixture preparation can prove deadly. Coupled with sterility concerns and multiple points of drug exposure between the pharmacy and the hospital bed, there are many dangers for human handling and compounding of hazardous drugs.

Dose compounding accuracy is checked by three independent systems:

• Digital indexers control the syringe-driving mechanism
• Position encoders double-check the accuracy of syringe movement
• Fluid measurements are then verified using pre- and post-weight checks

Reduced Waste & Operational Costs

Independent studies have shown that U.S. hospitals waste as much as 5%-40% of hazardous drugs each year.

With CytoCare’s waste management system, partial vials are managed using “hold” stations to minimize drug waste. If only a fraction of a drug is used, CytoCare keeps the unused drug portion in its compounding chamber for later use. The drug’s shelf-life is also recorded.

CytoCare can also eliminate operational costs associated with medical errors, waste, supplies, and the use of closed-system transfer devices.

Next: CytoCare™ Workflow Process »