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I’m very pleased to say, that the video segment from the interview I did on Huff Post Live this past November, was used on the AOL homepage in the UK towards the end of March! It’s very exciting to be getting this type of exposure for the foundation. Little by little, day by day, more people are getting the opportunity to hear Emily’s story. This can only be a good thing, as the more lives she touches, the more she will save. I truly pray each pharmacy technician and hospital worker who hears it will be motivated to utilize new systems in their hospital that will minimize the human error component of medicine. Meanwhile, our mission continues!

Here is a link to the AOL-UK Homepage featuring the video titled: “My Daughter Beat Cancer But Died From A Hospital Mistake”

As we had previously reported, the Emily Jerry Foundation was proud to attend the annual Health Information Management Systems Society event held in Orlando, Florida this past February. There were so many great attendees, special guests, and speakers there, the event was truly inspiring. We made incredible connections while networking with some of the most cutting edge minds in the world regarding Healthcare technology systems. It was an event that re-energized the foundation and really sparked us to give even more effort than we already had been. Healthcare technology constantly makes leaps and bounds in the medical world, everything that gets progressed is for the benefit of the patients that come through hospital doors. Foresee Medical develops healthcare software that can help estimate patients’ healthcare costs for their futures.

While attending this event, the Emily Jerry Foundation was honored with the Education Award in the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion, sponsored by the RFID in Healthcare Consortium. This award is given to a worthy organization that is dedicated to improving healthcare delivery through better education. We feel truly blessed to be recognized in such an esteemed manner by our peers. We continue to press on toward the goal of minimizing preventable patient deaths in our hospital systems across the US. Below are scans of the program to the event where we were presented with the award along with the actual certificate, an article that featured the Emily Jerry Foundation, as well as some other promotional materials from the evening.

Again we’d like to say Thank You to our partners for giving us this incredible honor! We fully intend on continuing to push the patient safety movement forward as much as humanly possible!

We have mentioned this article in the past, but I recently received the printed version in the mail and thought the scans would be much more powerful than the online link. As soon as I finished scanning the images I noticed I had a great testimonial in my email from someone who was moved to respond because of this very article. I’d like to share this email with you all:

Christopher,
I just read your interview in the March 2014 Pharmacy Purchasing & Products insert. It moved me to respond and share a success story from my hospital. We installed an IV Workflow system (DoseEdge™) in our pharmacy in late 2010. During dose preparation the technician must scan barcodes on the drug, diluent and fluid to ensure the ingredients are correct. They also take pictures of the amount of drug in the syringe before injecting into the bag for the pharmacist to verify.

We average 20 intercepted errors per week. I believe most of these would have been caught by the pharmacist, but…… In addition to DoseEdge there are several robotic and manual systems on the market. Perhaps in a future publication your foundation could advocate for barcode scanning in all sterile compounding.

P.S. I really like the angel label idea and plan to incorporate into my process.

Stephen L. Speth, RPh
Pharmacy Manager
Indiana University Health Bloomington Hospital
601 W. 2nd St.
Bloomington, IN 47402
812-353-5615

I get so encouraged when I read things like this. A special Thank You goes out to Stephen Speth for sending me this note. It means we are starting to win the battle for patient safety, and gives me more motivation than you can imagine to press on! Please click on the image below to download a pdf of the scanned article as it printed in the latest issue of Pharmacy Purchasing & Products Magazine.

Just wanted to follow-up on the presentation I gave at Vermont Children’s Hospital at Fletcher Allen Health Care on March 5th. The entire Pediatric Grand Rounds event went great, as evidenced by the awesome Thank-You letter I was sent by Dr. Lewis First, the Chief of Pediatrics at Vermont Children’s Hospital. I always get energized by these incredible events, especially seeing the passion that the caregivers have for making their facilities a safer place for patients. I can’t thank them enough for giving me the opportunity to come visit and share my story. See a scan of the full letter below!

We at the Emily Jerry Foundation are proud to announce a mention of our mission/organization by Mark Graban of Leanblog.org in a recent article titled “Some People Who Are Making a Difference for Patient Safety”. Leanblog is run by Mark and focuses on being “Lean in hospitals, business, and our world.” Being “Lean” refers to “The Toyota Way” management system, which has two parts: 1.) Eliminate waste and non-value-added activity (NVA) through continuous improvement, 2.) Practice respect for people. The article highlights three deserving foundations that are making an impact by trying to turn tragedy into triumph. The Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation and The Josie King Foundation join the Emily Jerry Foundation on this list of patient safety advocates that are working to eliminate preventable medical errors. We are thankful for people like Mark who are attempting to shed light on organizations such as ours. I am also excited to have been asked to join Mark as a guest on one of his upcoming podcasts!

Click here to read the full article titled “Some People Who Are Making a Difference for Patient Safety” on Leanblog.org

Pharmacy Purchasing & Products magazine is the health-system pharmacist’s premier source for practical and actionable information on the products and services that impact their practice. That is why I was very excited to be asked for the opportunity to do a Q&A interview session regarding details on the Emily Jerry Foundation and especially highlighting our advocacy efforts for safe pediatric medication labeling.

Click here to read the full article titled: “Advocating for Safe Pediatric Medication Labeling” which appears in the March 2014 edition.

The newest issue of Patient Safety hit the newsstands last Friday in select markets as a supplement to USA Today. An article about the Emily Jerry Foundation titled “A Father’s Vow to Prevent the Preventable” is published in the latest edition as well as being featured on the website! I am very excited to continue to move our mission forward, and publicity like this truly helps the cause. Check out all the very important articles at www.patientsafetyupdates.com

I am very excited for the upcoming events at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont on Wednesday, March 5th. Take a look at the beautiful picture of Emily they are using for their internal posters (viewable at the link that follows) to promote these engagements. The detailed agenda is also available for download by clicking here. This event is going to have an enormous audience as we are planning to be webcasting these presentations throughout the entire state of Vermont and parts of New York! This is an exciting opportunity to really make a big impact with our story, and with the solutions we are prepared to present. Thanks for your continued support!

Dr. Nat Sims – Image from Mass General Magazine

Over the course of my patient safety advocacy I have had the opportunity to meet many heroes within our healthcare system. People who go in to work, day in and day out attempting the impossible…to reduce medication errors to zero. Very few have had a bigger impact on myself, and on our entire healthcare system as a whole than Dr. Nathaniel Sims of Massachusetts General Hospital. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Sims at this past year’s Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation Conference, where I was one of the keynote speakers. We immediately connected with a strong bond due to our sense of purpose for a common cause.

The Emily Jerry Foundation’s advocacy efforts have been focused on the usage and implementation of smart-technology to reduce the occurrence of medical errors (especially caused by human error) in our nation’s facilities. Dr. Nat Sims personifies this vision. Dr. Sims has spent his career attempting to innovate the drug infusion pumps which are the standard tool for delivering fluids into a patient’s circulatory system. Through his tireless efforts as advisor to the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) the newest breed of “smart pumps” are able to spot potential dosage errors throughout the process, as well as notice dangerous interactions and dosage limits that may be breached. These improvements have come at the perfect time as Federal officials have been worried about the increase in reports of drug delivery incidents and serious injuries linked to them. These innovations are saving lives each and every day.

Dr. Nat Sims has had an incredibly distinguished career that has pushed the envelope further and ushered in an era of patient safety. On top of the smart pumps he is listed as an inventor on more than 10 Mass General patents for medical devices. The most recent innovation to be inspired by the Sims Lab is “smart” label technology. Licensed to Codonics, one of our great partners, the Safe Label System is utilized at the point of medication preparation and uses barcode technology to read information from a drug container and electronically identify it against the hospital’s approved pharmacy drug database. An audible and visual confirmation of the drug is presented to the clinician when scanned, and a Joint Commission compliant label is automatically printed containing the name of the drug, concentration, dilution and diluent (if applicable), any alert messages about the drug and a barcode for AIMS or BCMA integration. The easy-to-read, full-color labels are based on ASA guidelines for drug class and color. The entire process  takes seconds and ensures syringes, or any labeled medications, are prepared error-free. The Emily Jerry logo can be found on SLS systems wherever they are being used in children’s hospital’s across the country as a reminder to take special care in pediatric preparations.

We are so very excited to be associated with this technology and being a part of the process of moving it forward. Thank You to Dr. Nathaniel Sims of Mass General for being such an incredibly dedicated patient safety pioneer that made it all possible!

Read more detail about Dr. Sims in the great article below published in Mass General Magazine.

I am incredibly excited to announce I was asked to serve as the keynote speaker at the Intelligent Hospital Preconference Symposium to be held just prior to the 2014 HIMSS Conference. The Symposium will be held at the Hilton Hotel in Orlando, Fla., on February 23 at 8 AM ET. This was all made possible by the sponsors of my speech whom I am incredibly grateful for: MEPS Real-Time, Inc., a company on the leading edge of providing products and services focused on increasing patient safety in healthcare settings. Also, BD Medical, a segment of BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company), will be co-hosting my presentation with MEPS Real-Time, Inc. on Tuesday, Feb. 25, in the HIMSS Intelligent Hospital.

The press release that went out over the Business Wire yesterday can be read in full by clicking at the link below…

Click here to read the Business Wire Press Release.