Considering an event where a patient cannot take oral medications, infusion therapy is the most reliable alternative to get the medicated fluids into the patient’s body. A medical infusion pump has gained popularity due to its ability to infuse small or large quantities of nutrients and medications into a patient’s body with close monitoring. Its best suited for patients with chronic illness and those unresponsive to medications. Infusion therapy can be undertaken at hospitals, healthcare centers, and homes.
Variants in Infusing Systems
According to the need for medication to be infused into a patient’s body, significant variations in specialty infusing systems have influenced the infusion pump market trends. Several types of infusion pumps circulating in the market include insulin pumps designed for diabetic patients to administer self-dose, internal pumps to infuse nutrients and medications, and intelligent pumps that are electrically operated and assembled with several features. The features include user alerts to point to the risk of an excess drug intake, among other variants. Smart pumps are advantageous in controlling medication errors and are designed to notify the wrong administration of drugs through alerts ensuring safe procedures.
Rising Adoption of Infusing Systems in Health Care Facilities
All over the world, the infusion pump market share has grown substantially, owing to the facilities readily investing in mission-critical devices like infusion pumps that help in programming the medical dosage delivery in customized time intervals at a controlled rate.
Another reason for the rising demand for insulin pumps was triggered during the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a drastic increase in the need for infusion pumps globally as they could provide reliability, automation, and contactless dosing to severely infected patients. It helped ease the burden on ICU nurses and clinicians, ensuring no compromise in care quality, which resulted in the surge of several devices equipped by hospital fleets during the pandemic.
The increased use of infusion pumps in military medical units, the rising need for infusion pumps for patients with critical conditions, and the growing incidence of chronic illness all contribute to boosting the infusion pump market globally. The infusion pump market share has surged due to advancements in technology. Prominent market players such as Dickinson and Company (US), ICU Medical Inc. (US), Smiths Medical (US), and Baxter International (US), among other global leaders, are constantly innovating and coming up with solutions to improve the performance and safety of specialty infusing systems. This ensures the long-term growth and expansion of infusion pumps.
Risks of Infusion Systems
Although infusion pumps have been a blessing to the global medical care industry, there are several risks associated with using infusion systems that may cause malfunctioning of infusion pumps, such as software defects, electrical or mechanical issues, user interface problems, and more.
Innovative infusion systems sometimes may fail to activate pre-programmed alarms to indicate problem occurrences, or they may activate false alarms in the absence of any problem. There are chances of improper programming of infusion rates if the user is unclear about the onscreen instructions. Any system failures caused, such as battery failures, pump fires, etc., may result in under or over-administration of critical fluids.
However, all these issues are preventable and can be mitigated with the betterment of technology management. The FDA launched an Infusion pump improvement initiative a few years ago to control these issues by focusing on increased awareness and device improvement. Hospitals and risk management departments must perform due diligence, such as reviewing the FDA medical device recalls database, and train and educate their staff and nurses to use these devices correctly.
