Dr. Adrian Chan has been named a Fellow of the Canadian Medical and Biological Engineering Society (CMBES).

Photo of Queeny Shaath Photo of an smart infusion pump

queeny shaath

smart infusion pump data

An infusion pump is a medical device programmed to automatically administer set amounts of drugs or other liquids into a patient intravenously over a period of time. Drug errors occur when an incorrect dose or dose rate is programmed. To avoid such errors, a drug library is created providing dose limits for every drug. When the dose falls outside of the drug's limits, the pump requires the user to verify the dose settings. "Smart" infusion pumps provide a tracking system, saving all pump usage data, messages and errors (e.g., syringe and pressure errors) in a database. A study on smart infusion pumps indicates that, indeed, drug errors and drug events were detected by the drug library; however, poor compliance to the library did not reduce drug error rates if users failed to adjust dose based on the drug library [1]. Research will be conducted, leveraging the data provided by smart infusion pumps to improve compliance, and in turn reduce drug errors and associated complications. In addition, research will be conducted to use infusion pump data to enhance maintenance schedules and potentially predict device failures.

Thesis supervisors Adrian D. C. Chan, Doron Nussbaum (School of Computer Science) and Kim Greenwood (Director of Clinical Engineering, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario)

biography

Queeny Shaath is currently working on her Masters in Applied Science in Biomedical Engineering at Carleton University. She received a Bachelors of Engineering in Biomedical and Electrical Engineering Co-op with High Distinction in 2011 from Carleton University. She has done co-op work placements at Carleton University, Communications Research Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Canadian Space Agency.

Last updated September 11, 2012