Primus Innovations presents CytoCare
at the ASHP midyear meeting - Las Vegas

Frequently Asked Questions

What is meant by Patient-Specific dosing?
Patient-Specific dosing uses the patient’s unique physical profile to determine the correct dose of medication to administer. USP and JCAHO guidelines for accuracy and sterility recommend that a patient’s chemotherapy or pain therapy IV be prepared as accurately as possible, and should include consideration of the patient’s clinical profile before preparation. Primus Innovations and CytoCare™ exclusively focus on patient-specific IV dosing to quickly, safely, and accurately prepare the IV dose immediately after prescription.

What was the reason for developing the Chemotherapy application first?
Early in the 6 year R&D cycle the objective was to prove that CytoCare™ could handle the most complex and dangerous IV admixtures, with the understanding that if we could make a compelling case for Chemotherapy, other Drug Classes would surely follow. In addition, Chemotherapy is the largest Drug Class expense for Hospitals, and also the fastest-growing Drug Class (both over the past 3 years and forecasted to be for another 10 years), due to aging populations, higher incidences of cancer, and the realization that as cancer survival rates improve, cancer therapy is increasingly becoming a chronic disease that requires therapeutic treatment over a longer time period.

How does CytoCare™ help with compliance to USP 797 regulations?
USP 797 regulations is designed both to cut down on infections transmitted to patients through pharmaceutical products and to better protect staff working in pharmacies in the course of their exposure to pharmaceuticals. CytoCare™ addresses both of these issues by providing a sterile Class IV environment. Sterility is granted by the fact that the ambience inside the machine is continuously fed by a 0.4-0.5 m/s flow of sterile, HEPA filtered air.

How can CytoCare™ be more precise than a human while dosing liquids with syringes?
Syringes have a degree of imprecision due to the operator’s use of the syringe markers and the dead space at the end of the plunger’s route. The ISO standard 7881-1 on syringes allows low precision levels (4% is tolerated). CytoCare™ does not rely on markers, as it measures the exact plunger’s travel with two different and parallel systems. It uses an optic encoder on the motor moving the piston and a laser pointer. The precision level CytoCare™ can reach is thus higher than a human (no more than 1% low precision on doses higher than 1ml.).

Why have you manufactured a solution that can be used outside traditional clean rooms?
Primus Innovations believes that one of the constraints of worldwide hospitals’ current throughput issues in the preparation of dangerous substances IV admixtures (and the key driver for many outsourcing decisions), is the expense associated with building traditional clean rooms and the logistics associated with transporting the final IV containers from the hospital’s central pharmacy to the Ambulatory Patient Care areas. Primus Innovations believes that by designing and bringing to market a robot that can be placed close to where IV admixtures are administered to patients enables better patient care and satisfaction, and increases production throughput of IV admixtures.

How is the machine programmed/calibrated to handle different medications and containers?
Primus Innovations technical staff will take care of programming and calibration of CytoCare™. All new drugs are scanned by the computer vision system and the relevant data are stored in the internal database.

Is it possible to load the machine so that it would run for 3 hours without the operator?
The machine size has been kept to a minimum in order to allow its installation in every hospital laboratory, therefore the loading area is optimized for a continuous throughput and the typical duration of a work cycle (up to 9 preparations) is less than half hour. CytoCare™ is a machine designed for very flexible and highly sophisticated preparations, not for bulk production of injectable solutions.

FAQs - technology
FAQs - installation