BD Expands Integrated Medication Management to Help Tackle Hospital Drug Diversion

FRANKLIN LAKES, N.J., Nov. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX), a leading global medical technology company, today announced the launch of a new software application designed to help hospitals and health systems identify drug diversion at the 2018 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear Meeting.

Addiction to prescription narcotics in the United States has reached epidemic proportions, contributing to the opioid crisis and becoming a major driver of drug diversion within healthcare settings^1,2,3. Diversion of drugs, for personal use or illegal distribution, can cause significant financial loss⁴ and potentially impact care to patients and staff safety⁵.

As part of the BD HealthSight™ platform that is designed to support enterprise-wide medication management, the new BD HealthSight™ diversion management application is the next step in the company's efforts to address drug diversion through integrated solutions and analytics. The solution leverages data from existing BD products, including the BD Pyxis™ ES system, and the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) to provide actionable insights to assist with a hospital or health system's diversion investigations.

"Medication diversion is a growing and complex challenge for hospitals and health systems. We believe that to best address this challenge, a holistic approach to medication management that includes a combination of connected technologies and robust analytics is required," said Ranjeet Banerjee, worldwide president of Medication Management Solutions for BD. "Specific cases of diversion can be difficult to detect, and the impact can be devastating from a patient and healthcare worker safety standpoint. The new BD HealthSight diversion management application is designed to address the unique challenges associated with diversion by tracking patterns and risky behavior to help identify diverters as early as possible."

BD HealthSight™ diversion management is a hosted, cloud-based application that assists with drug diversion investigations by creating an investigation workflow to monitor, triage and assign potential diversion cases to specific investigators. Compared to traditional, statistically-based analytical tools that only look at amounts dispensed to identify potential diversion, BD utilizes machine learning algorithms and multiple dispensing behaviors —such as overrides, canceled transactions, delays in dispensing, administering and wasting medications — to surface clinicians whose behavior indicates higher risk for diversion. BD has partnered with Microsoft, who brings industry leading expertise in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science methodologies, to support development of these machine-learning based algorithms. Importantly, the application also aggregates EMR and dispensing cabinet data to automate a normally time-consuming and tedious manual review process to reconcile and automatically flag anomalous dispense, administration and waste transactions.

BD invites customers and media to join us at booth #320 at ASHP Midyear to learn more about the first in a series of solution developments from BD to address diversion management. To learn more about the new BD HealthSight™ diversion management analytics application, visit bd.com/diversion.

About BD
BD is one of the largest global medical technology companies in the world and is advancing the world of health by improving medical discovery, diagnostics and the delivery of care. The company supports the heroes on the frontlines of healthcare by developing innovative technology, services and solutions that help advance both clinical therapy for patients and clinical process for healthcare providers. BD and its 65,000 employees have a passion and commitment to help enhance the safety and efficiency of clinicians' care delivery process, enable laboratory scientists to accurately detect disease and advance researchers' capabilities to develop the next generation of diagnostics and therapeutics. BD has a presence in virtually every country and partners with organizations around the world to address some of the most challenging global health issues. By working in close collaboration with customers, BD can help enhance outcomes, lower costs, increase efficiencies, improve safety and expand access to healthcare. In 2017, BD welcomed C. R. Bard and its products into the BD family. For more information on BD, please visit bd.com.   

¹ Cicero TJ, Ellis MS. The prescription opioid epidemic: a review of qualitative studies on the progression from initial use to abuse. Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2017;19(3):259-269.

² Opioid addiction 2016 Facts and Figures https://www.asam.org/docs/default-source/advocacy/opioid-addiction-disease-facts-figures.pdf   Accessed October 30, 2018

³ Burger G, Burger M. Drug Diversion: New Approaches to an Old Problem. Am J Pharm Benefits. 2016;8(1):30-33.

⁴ UM pays $4.3M to settle federal charges for stolen drugs, but criminal charges possible https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/08/30/university-michigan-3-million-settle-federal-drug-diversion-lawsuit/1145373002/; Accessed October 30, 2018

⁵ Hospital tech who spread hepatitis C through drug use sentenced to 39 years https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lab-tech-hepatitis-c-kwiatkowski-sentenced-39-years/ Accessed October 30, 2018

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SOURCE BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company)