UK ITS and UK HealthCare complete new IV pump integration that improves safety for patients and nurses

After nearly two years of collaboration among UK HealthCare and UK Information Technology Services (UK ITS) teams, Epic now features an integration that automates IV pump dosages and monitors documentation once manually programed by nurses.

Since going live on December 9, 2025, Epic — the electronic health record at UK HealthCare — now allows for medication dosage orders to be sent directly to pumps and automates, documents and monitors changes in medications, dosages, fluid volumes and timestamps.

Designed to enhance patient safety and streamline workflows, this integration helps clinicians focus more on patient care.

In addition to bolstering that safety by helping decrease and prevent programming errors, this technology is also reducing hours nurses spend annually manually programing pumps and providing more accurate medical record documentation.

Preventing errors and supporting patient safety

What took several teams almost two years to implement has rolled out smoothly.

Chief Nursing Information Officer of UK HealthCare IT Jessica Collins said the IV pump integration acts as an extra safety check.

"If I am programming my IV pump, and I try to program it incorrectly, I'll receive a backup alert and then vice versa,” Collins said. “Let’s say I'm giving a set dose of a medication, but then I program my pump incorrectly by hitting .1 instead of .01, pump integration helps eliminate that mismatch of manual errors."

Because of the fast-paced nature of health care, unintentional errors like incorrectly programming medication on a pump can occur and put patients at risk.

Since going live, two key metrics have demonstrated significant improvements in patient safety and workflow efficiency.

First, pharmacy-established safety guardrails within the BD Alaris IV pumps are now being utilized in 95% of cases, providing crucial alerts when infusion parameters are out of range and helping to prevent medication errors, Collins said.

Second, compliance with the new integration is strong, with drugs being auto programmed into Epic directly from the pumps 90% of the time.

"This high rate of auto programming ensures that nurses consistently use the guardrail system, which in turn has resulted in a noticeable downward trend in errors," Collins said.

Additionally, the guardrail system now allows in-depth analytics to monitor workflows, giving nurses the tools they need to identify and address trouble areas, and ongoing efforts will continue to reduce barriers and support compliance.

A collaboration among UKHC and UK ITS teams

A project of this size required UK HealthCare Pharmacy and Nursing, Training and Informatics, ITS Epic Application teams, ITS Finance, Vendor Management, Project & Portfolio Management and other UK ITS teams to work together throughout every phase of implementing IV pump integration within Epic.

"This has been such a good project that shows the importance of having a bridge between nursing, operations and IT because we often unintentionally do things in a silo," Collins said. "But this project has really shown the importance of engaging the end user early, and without the work of the nursing team, we wouldn’t have been able to successfully rollout this new technology."

Before work on the IV pump integration could begin, approximately 4,800 pumps had to be remediated, cleaned up and reprogrammed.

The drug library, a digital database of standard drug dosages, also had to be evaluated and reorganized.

"Once the pump drug library profiles were consolidated across our adult, pediatric and neonatal care areas, then dosing units had to be added or updated for over 1,100 drug entries to align with the medication orders placed in Epic," according to Katie Cassidy, a coordinator with Pharmacy Informatics. "After completing the library build, then the 1,600 in-scope infusion medication records had to be tested to confirm correct communication between Epic and the Alaris pump library."

Additionally, the new integration required training of about 2,000 nurses — to ensure educational training and operational workflows remained steady.

Collins said, "We temporarily hired our own internal nurses for at-the-elbow support for this project, which is a different way to provide support, and it was more effective because these nurses were familiar with UK policies, procedures and were recognized by their nursing peers as established resources."

Reducing administrative time and ensuring compliance

The new IV pump integration also reduces the amount of time nurses spend programming pumps, and although it may seem insignificant, those few seconds add up to hundreds of hours over the course of a year.

"It’s projected to save nursing almost 4,500 hours a year just by having the pumps auto programmed," Collins said.

IV pump integration also ensures compliance with medical documentation.

When a patient is sick and they have multiple medication changes, Collins said nurses must remember that information or write it down.

"Now, this information will be automatically documented in the medication administration record (MAR),” she said. “Nurses will need to go back and validate that information, but you won’t have to guess what time you administered a medication."

Although this project faced delays, its completion is a big accomplishment for UKHC and UK ITS teams.

"Operationally, it’s probably the largest project since Epic go-live," Collins said. “Getting this across the finish line is a huge win for patient safety and nursing efficiency."

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