New capabilities focus on customer experience and innovation to drive maximum value sooner; deliver improved workflow efficiency, expanded automation, and enhanced medication management intelligence
Omnicell, Inc., a provider of medication management solutions and adherence tools for health systems and pharmacies, today announced its latest enhancements to the Company’s portfolio of medication management solutions. The Summer 2021 Release is designed to deliver greater process efficiency, expand automation to support medication workflows, and provide greater intelligence for workflow optimization. The release also provides greater platform deployment options, offering customers more flexibility and improving time to value for strategic initiatives.
Medication management continues to be one of the biggest challenges in healthcare today, with overall pharmaceutical expenditures in the United States reaching a total of $535.3 billion in 2020.1 With the Summer 2021 Release, Omnicell is further optimizing the advanced hardware, software, and technology-enabled services that support the progression toward the Autonomous Pharmacy, a roadmap designed to develop a zero-error, fully automated medication management infrastructure.
Generally available today, the Summer 2021 Release will help our healthcare partners realize the maximum value for their technology investment faster through:
Improved Workflow Efficiency
The U.S. healthcare system employs over 4.2 million healthcare practitioner, technical, and support personnel, with double-digit growth and shortages forecast in nearly all positions.2 The Summer 2021 Release includes enhancements designed to improve medication management workflows and patient safety, allowing clinicians to provide greater patient care and reduce job-related stress and burnout. These include:
- Expanded capabilities within operating room (OR) and perioperative settings, to simplify anesthesiologist workflows, improve inventory visibility, provide data insights, and overall improve staff satisfaction and patient safety. New closed-loop interoperability between XT Anesthesia Workstation™ and the electronic health record, beginning with Epic, to support intuitive reconciliation processes that facilitate greater waste compliance.
- Omnicell’s IVX Workflow, an IV compounding workflow system used in the central pharmacy, now supports decentralized compounding, enabling an alternative way to compound new orders. Technicians simply scan the pharmacy information system (PIS) label at the device to begin compounding. This feature and other enhancements included in this release will help accelerate implementations and increase the number of compounded sterile preparations produced through IVX Workflow.
Expanded Automation Within Workflows
Controlled substance management remains a significant challenge in the U.S. healthcare system. More than 148 million doses of medicine were lost in 2019, compromising both patient and workforce safety.3 New enhancements to Omnicell’s Controlled Substance Dispenser (CSD) delivered in the Summer 2021 Release are designed to provide customers more flexibility with their medication supply chain and enhance controlled substance management initiatives.
Through a new partnership with Fresenius Kabi, a new Controlled Substance Dispenser cassette will be designed specifically for Simplist® MicroVault® 1 and 2 mL prefilled syringes, enabling single dose dispensing of these widely used syringes. The Controlled Substance Dispenser helps to better manage inventory, reduce the chance of diversion, and save nursing time.
Enhanced Intelligence
It is estimated that drug shortages are costing facilities at least $359 million per year in additional spend on labor alone.4 With the Summer 2021 Release, Omnicell One™, a technology-enabled service delivered through the cloud, has expanded inventory optimization through new enhancements designed to streamline operations, including:
- Intra-system Stockout Dashboards featuring easy-to-read dashboards that show the medications and locations that are frequently stocked out or at risk of stock out to help prevent future shortages.
- Industry-sourced COVID-19 Lists to help better manage and track critical medications used in the treatment of COVID-19; also available through Omnicell Essentials.
- Cabinet Benchmarking, including safety standards identified by ISMP and other Omnicell practices standards, eliminating the need to manually select certain cabinet configuration settings.
Platform Flexibility
By 2024, 45 percent of IT spend is expected to shift to cloud-based initiatives, including system infrastructure, infrastructure software, application software, and business process outsourcing.5 Adopting cloud technology is the first step in the process for Pharmacy and IT to better align on business objectives and open new doors for data-driven improvement.
With the Summer 2021 Release, health system leaders now have the option to elevate their pharmacy operations with greater scalability through Cloud-Hosted OmniCenter®. This new platform flexibility will allow health system pharmacies to securely access data, reduce IT burden, forecast predictable monthly costs, deliver a seamless user experience, and provide better space optimization.
As Omnicell continues to accelerate digital pharmacy transformations, the need for strong partnerships to ensure organizational readiness, drive solution adoption and ensure ongoing customer success has become evident.
“Our commitment to providing a superior customer experience means understanding where customers are at in their journey to the Autonomous Pharmacy,” said Denise Cox, senior vice president and chief customer officer at Omnicell. “With Summer 2021, we have renewed focus on providing the expertise and guidance to help health systems navigate the complexities of integrating innovative solutions, and deliver the structured approach needed—from strategy to execution to ongoing success—to enable healthcare providers to manage costs, improve quality, and increase human efficiency across the continuum of care.”
Learn more about the latest innovation included in Omnicell’s Summer 2021 Release here.
About Omnicell
Since 1992, Omnicell has been committed to transforming the pharmacy care delivery model to improve outcomes and lower costs. Through the vision of the autonomous pharmacy, a combination of automation, intelligence, and technology-enabled services, powered by a cloud data platform, Omnicell supports more efficient ways to manage medications across all care settings. Over 7,000 healthcare facilities worldwide use Omnicell automation and analytics solutions to help increase operational efficiency, reduce medication errors, deliver actionable intelligence, and improve patient safety. More than 50,000 institutional and retail pharmacies across North America and the United Kingdom leverage Omnicell’s innovative medication adherence and population health solutions to improve patient engagement and adherence to prescriptions, helping to reduce costly hospital readmissions. To learn more, visit www.omnicell.com.
1Tichy EM, et al. Am J Health-Syst Pharm online. April 2021
2aha-trendwatch-hospital-and-health-system-workforce-strategic-planning_Jan2020.pdf
3https://www.protenus.com/resources/183m-lost-due-to-healthcare-workforce-diverting-drugs-from-patient-care-in-2019
4Drug_Shortages_Labor_Cost_Report_Vizient.pdf
5https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/cloud-shift-impacts-all-it-markets/
