Satasairaala Hospital Pharmacy acquires NewIcon’s IV ICON Twins compounding system to expand production capacity

The hospital pharmacy seeks improved production capacity, ergonomics, and patient and drug safety with IV ICON Twins. 

SataDiag, a business enterprise that provides diagnostic, pharmaceutical, and equipment maintenance services to Satakunta Hospital District Consortium (Satasairaala) – which also operates as the hospital pharmacy, will soon have the most efficient automation system on the market to assist their Compounding Unit.

Head Pharmacist at the Compounding Unit Eeva Suvikas-Peltonen says that the staff, patients, and other healthcare units that are SataDiag’s customers are eagerly waiting for NewIcon’s IV ICON Twins compounding system to arrive. 

“We have always paid special attention to the quality of our compounded sterile preparations; however, the volume has not been enough to fully cover the current need for antibiotics,” says Suvikas-Peltonen. “The increase in production volumes brought about by the automation system will make it possible to offer medicines to more customers.” 

IV ICON Twins compounding system proved to be the only system that can help achieve the desired production volumes 

Currently, the hospital pharmacy produces antibiotics semi-automatically: the pump dispenses the solvent used, but then the rest of the compounding process proceeds manually. This semi-automated method reaches about 65,000 doses of medicines per year. 

Suvikas-Peltonen expects the incoming IV ICON Twins compounding system to increase the capacity by double and produce at least 100,000 doses of cefuroxime and 10,000 doses of piperacillin-tazobactam annually. Putting such amounts of antibiotics into use within normal working hours requires exceptional efficiency- even with automation. Only NewIcon’s IV ICON Twins compounding system was able to meet the hospital pharmacy’s expectations. 

Work ergonomics and sensible division of tasks 

Another clear driver for the system’s purchasing decision was work ergonomics. 

“The current semi-automatic compounding method requires the nurses to work in pairs, so that the work tasks can be varied,” says Suvikas-Peltonen. “Piperacillin-tazobactam is especially difficult to dissolve, so the constant handshaking movement needed to dissolve the solvent can be intensive for the nurses’ arms and wrists. We hope the IV ICON Twins will make work easier and improve nurses’ ergonomics.” 

Moreover, thanks to the system, in the future, the compounding process will likely bind only one person at a time. Since the IV ICON Twins is able to take care of tasks that require precision and care, yet routinely, faster, staff time is freed up for other tasks, both in the hospital pharmacy and in the wards. 

Centralized compounding as a guarantee of patient and drug safety 

With the IV ICON Twins compounding system, the hospital pharmacy will be able to take on an increasing share of the production of the necessary antibiotics. This will significantly improve patient and drug safety. When medicines are compounded directly at the wards, the risk of contamination is clearly higher than in a cleanroom of a hospital pharmacy. 

“We have done a lot of studies on the operation and conditions of the wards to further improve patient and drug safety,” Eeva Suvikas-Peltonen emphasizes. “Now that we can take care of the compounding of antibiotics centrally at the hospital pharmacy, we will also be able to ensure that they are of aseptic quality.” 

The photo used in this article is originally from Satasairaala’s Facebook page.