Guarantying the quality of chemotherapy: from the order to the administration.

Ensuring the quality and security when prescribing drugs like chemotherapies is a complex task if one wants to cover the whole chain from the prescribing physician to the administrant nurse. At the University hospitals of Geneva, new applications covering the whole chain from the prescription up to and including the fabrication of the products have been developed in three phases and are being used in a production stage. In order to cover the "last yard" at the bed level, a fourth phase has been started with a pilot study based on labels containing RFID chips for preparations and for patients. The last phase will make use of all traceability data acquired from the prescription to the preparation to validate that the right product is administered to the right patient, and to record who is administrating it.