New measurement technology to help prevent medication errors

Despite advances in medicine, there are still many accidents where patients are given the wrong dose of medication.Korean researchers have developed a new technology that can measure even minute amounts of medication in real time.Park Se-young has more.About ten-thousand accidents involving medication occur worldwide each year, …killing around one hundred people.In most cases, this happens because either the medical team or a machine administers the wrong amount of medication to a patient.To help prevent this, Korean researchers have developed a new measurement technology."Using laser diodes based on the infrared absorption method, the groundbreaking technology can measure the flow rate by gripping tubes and without cutting them."The new flowmeter is contactless and can measure even minute amounts of medication in real time by the difference in temperature caused by different flow rates.Until now, doses of medication like anesthetics were measured using ultrasonic waves but that method lacked accuracy."It's easy to install and can be implemented at a low cost so it can be widely used at hospitals to accurately monitor doses of drugs."The study with support from the European Collaboration in Measurement Standards and the National Research Foundation of Korea …was published in the journal Metrologia.Park Se-young, Arirang News.