By Christina Orlovsky, senior writer
Patients taking prescription medication—and the nurses that
care for them—have one less thing to worry about, thanks to a new device
approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The Electronic Medication Management Assistant (EMMA),
manufactured by INRange Systems Inc. of Altoona, Pennsylvania, is a “Web-enabled
pharmacy” that allows pharmacists, nurses and other health care practitioners
the ability to remotely schedule medications, alter doses and manage delivery
for patients taking up to 10 medications.
According to Chris Bossi, president of INRange Systems,
medications are delivered to patients packaged in blister cards, which the
patient then inserts into EMMA just as a compact disc is inserted into a CD
player.
“The unit grabs it and that’s the last thing the patient has
to do,” he added. “EMMA reads the barcode and knows what the medication is.”
An audible alarm and a visual alarm alert the patient when
it’s time to take their medication. Extra precautions are put in place for
patients who may not notice either of these alarms.
“The system can call their home phone to tell them when it’s
time, in case they are hard of hearing,” Bossi continued. “If they don’t take it
within a prescribed period of time, it can call a relative and let them know.”
In order to receive FDA approval, INRange had to do usability
testing with people ages 24 to 86 and found that once the elderly population
overcame their reluctance to use the technology, they found it easy to use.
Bossi explained that EMMA has proven useful to nurses, as
well, who are now able to spend more time caring for their patients and less
time managing medications.
“The reception by nurses has been very good because now they
don’t have to worry about sorting loose pills or about whether the patient
didn’t take their medication,” he said.
The device’s creator, Mary Anne Papp, D.O., FACC, an associate
professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and the director of
the Heart Failure Clinic at Froedtert Hospital, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was
responding to a need for a system that eased the frustration of nurses caring
for congestive heart patients whose medication dosages changed frequently.
“My goal was to create an electronic nurse who would sort the
patient’s medications, reorganize them when they change and deliver them to the
patient,” Papp said in a statement on the INRange Web site. “EMMA is that
electronic nurse. She is stationed in the home 24 hours a day, seven days a
week. She works nights, weekends, holidays and takes no vacations. Now, home
nurses can concentrate on what they do best: caring for the patients while EMMA
manages the medications.”
Bossi concluded that currently EMMA is best used to serve the
chronically ill and those with traumatic brain injury. He added that the company
is also talking to the military for potential use with patients suffering from
post-traumatic stress disorder.
For more information, visit the INRange Systems Web site.
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