Page 50 - BusinessWest September 19, 2022

HEALTHCARE HEROES OF WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS
Innovation in Health/Wellness
Here, Shared Research by Nurses and Engineers Will Benefit Patients Everywhere
IBy Joseph Bednar
ntravenous (IV) infusion pump systems are among the most recognized tech- nologies in healthcare, used by about 90% of hospital patients.
They’re also hopelessly out of date, Karen Giuliano said.
“The design has been around a long time, and hospitals don’t buy one; they buy an entire fleet. They have to invest in training, service contracts, and IT
infrastructure. To install a platform is a huge investment and effort.”
And that has led to stagnation, she added. “Over 80% of pumps are really old
platforms and don’t do the job they need to do. They’re not developed for today’s standards.”
Enter the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation at UMass Amherst, which has made improving the safety and usability of IV smart pumps one of its first major projects. The team has been exploring flow-rate accuracy in a variety of settings and use cases, with the goal of developing pumps that eliminate inaccuracy, inconvenience, and resulting medical errors through new technology and simplified design.
Leah Martin Photography
The work is gaining widespread attention, as Giuliano, co-director of the center and associate professor of Nursing, and postdoctoral research fellow Jeannine Blake were recently recognized by the Assoc. for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) for the Best Research Paper in 2021.
Their paper, “Nurse and Pharmacist Knowledge of Intravenous Smart Pump System Setup Requirements,” explored knowledge of intravenous smart-pump system setup requirements among nurses and pharmacists. The results were published in Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology, AAMI’s peer-reviewed journal.
“We don’t want to build a new pump; we want to build a set of requirements for manufacturers that have been sitting idle for too long without being forced to innovate for the safety of patients and the workflow of the nurses,” Giuliano told BusinessWest.
The effort demonstrates the types of innovation she and Frank Sup, associate professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and the other co-director of the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation, intended when they launched the center in early 2021. It also reflects the cross-educational opportunities for people like Blake, the first nursing doctoral student to enter an engineering postdoctoral fellowship at UMass.
“Students have come out of here with a siloed education, nurses and engineers. There’s not a natural inkling to work together; they might not even know the importance of collaborating in that way,” Giuliano said. “What we want is to have students graduate that already have that in common, to reach across the aisle. The healthcare environment should not be a silo.”
Under Sup’s leadership, the center has also begun research on the use of robotics in healthcare. It teams doctoral students from both engineering and nursing, as well as an undergraduate nursing honors student, to identify challenges and develop robotic solutions to improve healthcare delivery for patients and providers.
The incorporation of robotic technology into the healthcare system is ongoing and already includes innovations like fully autonomous disinfecting systems
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2022 HEALTHCARE HEROES
The Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation
Co-directors Frank Sup and Karen Giuliano