Health Robotics Announces Official i.v.STATION(TM) Inauguration at Gregorio Maranon University Hospital

BOZEN, Italy - Health Robotics today announced that Juan Jose Guemes, Health Secretary of State for Madrid’s Regional Government officially unveiled i.v.STATION at Gregorio Maranon University Hospital in Madrid last Monday.

i.v.STATION represents a revolutionary approach in the quest for safe, accurate, efficient, cost effective, and ready-to-administer intravenous patient doses. It offers unprecedented reduction of medication errors, ISO-compliant accuracy, improved sterility, and clinician labor savings: all within a scalable, cost-effective, distributed, and fail-safe architecture.

During the introduction ceremony of i.v.STATION’s first hospital installation in Europe, Mr. Guemes toured the hospital’s pharmacy aseptic compounding facilities, and inspected how i.v.STATION automatically prepared IV medications from Spanish drug vials in a variety of syringe sizes in less than one week after its delivery to the hospital. Afterwards, Mr. Guemes stated to a group of approximately 40 journalists including 5 regional and national TV stations the following: “i.v.STATION permits much more efficient use of the medications, especially for high-cost and high-risk medications, focusing on patients requiring strict therapy guidelines and rigorous pharmaco-vigilance and control of the aseptic compounding process. After its full installation with IV Bags in 4 to 5 weeks from now, this technology will be expanded to the rest of public hospitals in the Madrid Region” For a subtitled video transcript of TV’s coverage of Mr. Guemes’ presentation to Spain’s national press, please visit TV coverage at: www.health-robotics.com/en/newsroom/

Following Mr. Guemes’ introduction, Maria Sanjurjo, Director of Pharmacy for Gregorio Maranon University Hospital publicly stated: “i.v.STATION allows us without a doubt to improve patient safety and the overall quality of our aseptic compounding processes by guaranteeing compliance with physician’s correct prescription, drug quantity, container sterility and drug stability with a 99% confidence factor. Additionally, we have verified that i.v.STATION is capable of processing between 40 and 60 doses per hour, permitting us to tremendously increase the efficiency of our aseptic pharmacy operations by multiplying by 10 the amount of high-cost, high-risk intravenous patient doses that we will be able to bring back from the nurse stations into our centralized pharmacy services, from approximately 10.000 per year to 100.000 ready-to-administer syringes and IV Bags per annual period.” For transcripts of Madrid’s press coverage of Ms. Sanjurjo’s statements, please visit Spanish press coverage at: www.health-robotics.com/en/newsroom/

The primary challenges in today’s IV Admixture operations are serious medication errors such as drug exchange and accuracy mistakes, high costs, life-critical turn-around time, intravenous drugs waste, regulatory issues, and difficulty in maintaining adequately trained clinical staff. i.v.STATION automatically and aseptically compounds non-hazardous IV doses and dispenses them to clinical staff in a ready-to-administer patient formats for antibiotics, pain therapy, anti-virals, epidurals, and other IVs and injectable medications. i.v.STATION was designed to address the above-mentioned industry-challenges, and to overcome the fact that until now, the range of products and technology available to mitigate these widespread industry patient safety and financial problems has consisted of variations on the IV “piggyback” bag, outsourcing of IVs, and 1990s-developed automated “solutions” that have seen little or no adoption and success over the past twenty years[1].

“Gaspar DeViedma and I were very impressed when we saw the i.v.STATION installation in Madrid already calibrated and producing syringes with local Spanish drug vials only 2 days after the robot was delivered to the hospital. It is indeed reassuring that we have reached a new level of simplicity and have set a very high bar to match in the physical installation of IV robotics, as compared to other automation solutions in the market. We look forward to work with our exclusive Iberian partner Grifols International in the second installation of i.v.STATION in Spain at Hospital Vall D’Hebron in Barcelona in December of 2009 and subsequent Grifols customer installations in Spain, Portugal, and Latin America, including the upcoming i.v.STATION’s customization for Grifols’ market leading PVC-free IV Bags, and to work with Grifols and in partnership with other regional governments in Spain and Portugal to establish i.v.STATION as the gold standard for all IV therapy patient doses in Grifols’ core markets” stated Werner Rainer, Health Robotics’ CEO.

About Health Robotics:

Health Robotics is the global leading supplier of life-critical intra-venous medication preparation, compounding, and dispensing Robots, providing healthcare facilities in four continents with robotics technology and software automation solutions. The world-leading solutions CytoCare [hazardous IVs], i.v.STATION [non-hazardous IVs], i.v.SOFT [workflow engine] and the future development of TPNstation, have and will greatly contribute to ease global hospitals’ growing pressures to improve patient safety through the effective and efficient production of sterile, accurate, and ready-to-administer IVs, to eliminate life-threatening drug-exchange errors, to decrease other medication errors and sterility risks, and to work more efficiently, increase throughput, reduce waste, and contain costs. For more information, please visit www.health-robotics.com

[1] Am J Hosp Pharm 46(11): 2286-93 1989

For additional information, please contact: Health Robotics S.r.l. Gaspar DeViedma Altmanstrasse 9A, Bozen, Sud-Tyrol, I-39100 USA: +1(609)980-7976 EUROPE: +39(346)963-4934 gaspar.deviedma@health-robotics.com

Source: Health Robotics

For additional information, please contact: Health Robotics S.r.l., Gaspar DeViedma, Altmanstrasse 9A, Bozen, Sud-Tyrol, I-39100, USA: +1(609)980-7976, EUROPE: +39(346)963-4934, gaspar.deviedma at health-robotics.com