Patient safety
- standardized process for managing investigational agent to improve patient safety while maintaining regulatory compliance
- safeguards to prevent selection of expired or quarantined agents when dispensing
- reduce the risk of dispensing to patients not enrolled on a study
Dispensing
- capture complete dispense details and record in the DARF
- prevent dispensing of drugs that will expire within the prescribed treatment period by evaluating dispense date, supply amount and expiration date
- track dispense details including drug thaw time, time of reconstitution, and temperature reading at time of reconstitution​
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Centralized inventory management
- centralized electronic management of investigational agents offers improved legibility, reduced paperwork/handwriting and streamlined inventory management to provide pharmacists more time for valuable work and patient care
provides standardized DARFs that capture required transactions (receive, dispense, return and destroy) to ensure consistency and compliance with applicable regulations - DARFs can be customized using filters yet still maintain a standard appearance for all protocols regardless of sponsor
- automates processes to provide accurate management and documentation of agent receipt, storage, dispensing, returns and final disposition which improves overall pharmacy efficiency
- provides common access to protocol, patient and agent information, eliminating duplicate or multiple spreadsheets maintained by individual users – time savings for staff and elimination of paper recordkeeping greatly reduces waste
Order, receive, transport
- ordering of agents is aligned with the patient and protocol using a variety of scalable order forms, email and online ordering
- able to track processed orders via Agent Order Report (queue)
- upon receival, IDEA captures agent details, including exact date/time received, pharmacy-generated lot numbers, container type, quantity, unit, method, packaging, supplying agency, storage location, etc.
- updates drug accountability records (DARFs) and notifies requesting user of agent arrival
- can receive agent at control/central location and transport to satellite locations with separate DARFs.
Oncology expertise
CREDIT had its origin in oncology and continues today as the premiere web-based software for community sites supported by the National Cancer Institute Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP.) IDEA was developed through funding from Phase I and Phase II cooperative agreements with the NCI.
While IDEA fully functions as a stand-alone pharmacy management system, it was originally developed to work hand-in-hand with CREDIT to maximize efficiency. Protocol data and patients are seamlessly exchanged between the two systems, eliminating duplicate data entry. Staff access permissions allow users to use/see the data they need to perform their required job duties.