Towards a Mobile-Based Platform for Traceability Control and Hazard Analysis in the Context of Parenteral Nutrition: Description of a Framework and a Prototype App

BACKGROUND: The parenteral nutrient (PN) mixtures may pose great risks of physical, microbiological, and chemical contamination during their preparation, storage, distribution, and administration. These potential hazards must be controlled under high levels of excellence to prevent any serious complications for the patients. As a result, management control and traceability of any of these medications is of utmost relevance for the patient care, along with ensuring treatment continuity and adherence. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to develop a mobile-based platform to support the control procedures and traceability services in the domain of parenteral nutrient (PN) mixtures in an efficient and nonintrusive manner. METHODS: A comprehensive approach combining techniques of software engineering and knowledge engineering was used for the characterization of the framework. Local try-outs for evaluation were performed in a number of application areas, carrying out a test/retest monitoring to detect possible errors or conflicts in different contexts and control processes throughout the entire cycle of PN. From these data, the absolute and relative frequencies (percentages) were calculated. RESULTS: A mobile application for the Android operating system was developed. This application allows reading different types of tags and interacts with the local server according to a proposed model. Also, through an internal caching mechanism, the availability of the system is preserved even in the event of problems with the network connection. A set of 1040 test traces were generated for the assessment of the system under various environments tested. Among those, 102 traces (9.81%) involved conflictive situations that were properly taken care of in this paper by suggesting solutions to overcome them. CONCLUSIONS: A mobile oriented system was generated and tested in order to allow enhanced control and quality management of PN mixtures that is easy to integrate into the daily praxis of health care processes.