San Diego, Calif.-based CareFusion Corporation agreed to make bi-directional connectivity available between its Alaris system and Epic Systems Corporation’s electronic medical record (EMR) platform. CareFusion is a medical device manufacturer while Verona, Wisc.-based Epic designs software for medical groups, hospitals and integrated healthcare organizations.

The Alaris system is an intravenous (IV) medication safety system. The infusion pump is marketed by CareFusion as highly effective, designed to protect any kind of infusion including intermittents such as antibiotics and chemotherapy, and all infusion modalities, including large volume pump, patient controlled analgesia and syringe.

The Epic EMR is a records database software system that spans all departments in a hospital or other medical setting.

“This new relationship is an exciting step towards improving collaboration and connectivity between medical devices and information technology,” said Darren Dworkin, senior vice president for Enterprise Information Systems and chief information officer at Cedars-Sinai Health System in Los Angeles, Calif. “This type of integration helps to further transform HIT [health information technology] into a strategic tool to drive improvements to both patient care and safety.”

Communication between the Alari and Epic’s EMR is intended to enable clinicians to remotely access and re-populate infusion orders, which theoretically will help hospitals reduce the risk of harmful and expensive IV medication errors that occur in manual programming at the patient’s bedside. With the systems integrated, it is hoped there will be less duplicative reporting and inefficient workflow.

“In the evolving health care landscape, interoperability between devices and information systems is among our customers’ most critical priorities,” said J.C. Kyrillos, senior vice president and general manager of CareFusion’s infusion systems business. “This agreement with Epic builds on recent progress we have made across CareFusion to improve device interoperability and represents yet another way CareFusion helps hospitals bridge the gap between medical devices and HIT systems.”