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Baxter Healthcare
Automated Drug Delivery System
Baxter Healthcare Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Baxter International Inc., a global medical products and services company that, through its subsidiaries, provides critical therapies for people with life-threatening conditions. Health-care providers and their patients in more than 100 countries use Baxter’s products and services in bioscience (biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, biosurgery products and transfusion therapies), medication delivery and renal therapy.
The Business Challenge
Baxter Healthcare wished to create an automated drug delivery system similar to a ‘vending machine’. The desired system would store pharmaceuticals and other hospital inventory within individual drawers; controlled by a secure software system. The system would manage pharmaceutical inventory; orders, patients, doctors, and nurses from HIS systems via an HL7 interface; provide security via card-reader and fingerprint scanner and maintains volumes of reporting and tracking information.
Why Notions Systems?
Baxter requirements called for problem solving and risk mitigation skill sets. Baxter originally sought, but could not identify, a firm specializing in ‘automated drug delivery systems’. The unique nature of Baxter’s requirements meant the project was laden with uncertainties and risk. Notions Systems was selected for our technical competencies and risk mitigation and engagement management experience. The overall effort was a complete collaboration between Baxter personnel and Notions’ consulting team, which formed a 20-person effort.
The Baxter Solution
The Baxter engagement was filled with significant challenges including:
- Risk management
- Disciplined project management
- Seamless integration of Baxter and Notions cultures
- Mentoring of Baxter developers in formalized software development practices
- Strict adherence to quality processes
- Accurate forecasts of project costs and timeframes
- Working with medical affairs to ensure adherence to FDA standards
In addition to management challenges, many technical hurdles were overcome including:
- Analysis and design of a system that would perform acceptably on a limited client (75MHz 486 running Windows NT 4.0)
- Creation of a fault-tolerant system running 24x7 that would enable client systems to function independently during network outages
- Interfacing with over 30 separate HIS systems using an early XML adaptation
- Creation of a distributed data model that would allow doctors and patients to move freely between rooms in the hospital
- Creation of a configurable architecture that would support over 300 different hospitals each with different operating procedures
- Implementation of a complex security model that overlaid doctor and nurse security with medication distribution rules
- Rigorous execution of formalized testing that included components of FDA validation
- Extensive load testing to aid in performance analysis
Results
The success of Notions Systems in this assignment is best defined by Baxter in the following excerpt from a letter penned by a Baxter Healthcare division
vice president:
"Since our first introduction a year ago, I have been consistently impressed with your organization and the individuals that represent it. Initially, the objective and thorough analysis, performed in a complex political environment, were excellent and have since proved extremely accurate. As was stated by the Vice President of Engineering of the company acquiring these assets 'This was the best software development project I have ever seen.' In milestone achievement and risk management, this project far surpassed anything I have ever been associated with.”
Technologies Utilized
The Baxter engagement involved the following primary technologies:
- Visual Basic and Visual C++
- Embedded C to drive the firmware
- MQSeries
- HL7 (early adoption of XML standards for healthcare)
- Sybase SQLServer
- Embedded Crystal Reports
- Windows NT
- WinSock
- RAS
- WinRunner
- LoadRunner
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