MIT graduate entrepreneurs Gauti Reynisson and Ívar Helgason worked for hospitals and medicare companies implementing medication safety technologies, when they realized a major health issue. 1.5 million patients in the United States experience prescription medication errors every year due to drug administration mistakes. They decided to return to MIT to find a solution to this health issue and created the MedEye. Advertised and developed by the startup Mint Solutions, MedEye has made it's way to being utilized by hospitals in the Netherlands. It has caught the attention of the medical community and the Dutch discovered ten percent of MedEye's scans caught medication errors. Mint Solutions goal is to aid nurses by selling them the MedEye in order to help them efficiently and correctly administer prescription medication. Currently, Mint Solutions is working with Dutch health care to spread the MedEye to fifteen more hospitals in countries including the UK, Belgium, and Germany.
In order to use the MedEye, a patient must have a wristband with a barcode. The nurse scans the barcode which accesses the patients' medical record. Then the nurse puts the prescribed pills into the MedEye tray. The MedEye uses a small camera to scan the pills in order to analyze their size, shape, color, and markings. Finally, the computer science comes into play when the software distinguishes pills by grouping them in a database through the use of algorithms. What's impressive is the innovation of MedEye's software, which updates and cross-references the results in the patient's medical record. The results are illustrated by color-coded boxes, green means it was correctly prescribed and red means it was wrong or unknown. What makes the MedEye unique, Helgason says it requires no change in a hospitals' workflow or logistics, "it's more usable and accessible in health care facilities"(Stop Drug Errors). It;s great to see how computer science is becoming an important part in the innovation and growth of medicare and the administration of drugs.
References:
http://mintsolutions.eu/medeye-landing-en/#medeye-nurse-1
http://news.mit.edu/2014/startup-stops-drug-errors-0828
http://impressivemagazine.com/2013/11/02/medeye-system-reduces-medication-errors/
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