3PC-027 Productivity analysis of an automated compounding system for intravenous chemotherapy

BackgroundThe automated preparation of anti-neoplastic drugs presents unquestionable advantages in terms of precision, asepsis, traceability and decreased occupational exposure to hazardous drugs, increasing the safety of patients and manipulators.However, productivity remains one of the great unknowns of this emerging technology.PurposeThe objective of this work is to analyse the productivity of an automated anti-neoplastic preparation system since its implementation in the hospital.Material and methodsIn this descriptive study, we retrospectively evaluated the collected data from 4 April 2016 to 16 August 2018. Analysing the following variables: number of working days, number of preparations, preparations per hour, number of preparations per drug, dose accuracy, percentage of cancellations and their causes, time per cycle, percentage of automatic work time, number of cycles and average time per preparation according to user, number of final preparations and average of vials per preparation.ResultsThe number of mixtures prepared was 1095, 2901 and 2901 in 2016, 2017 and 2018, which represents an interannual increase of 265% and 160% respectively. The number of active ingredients prepared with the robotic system was 10 in 2016, 15 in 2017 and 18 in 2018, with Paclitaxel the most frequently prepared drug. The percentage of preparations with deviations from the theoretical dose greater than 10% was 1.9% in 2016, 1.2% in 2017 and 1.3% in 2018.No differences were observed in the average time per preparation between the different users. The shortest average time per preparation was obtained in cycles of eight final preparations (6.8 min) and with one vial or less per mixture (6.2 min). The average duration per cycle was 43.2 min, with 54% of automatic work.The main cancellation causes were: vials and syringes recognition errors, weighing errors, adapter recognition failures and computer problems.ConclusionAn increase in productivity has been achieved since 2016: we obtained the greatest productivity in cycles with eight final preparations and one vial or less per preparation. The cycle cancellations are the main limitations for the increase of productivity. The automatic preparation time represents an opportunity to improve productivity in the robotic anti-neoplastic preparation.References and/or acknowledgementsNo conflict of interest.