Medication errors are frequent, commonly cause adverse events and pose significant risk to patients especially children.
Kid-eCalc is an educational tool designed to increase the speed and accuracy of paediatric anaesthetic drug dose calculation and equipment sizing.
Drug doses and the volumes need to be administered are automatically calculated using the childs weight. When the weight is unavailable the estimated weight is calculated using the recommended APLS age based weight formulas.
Drugs and equipment are divided into four key clinical situations to aid rapid navigation and easy drug identification.
-Anaesthesia: Airway Equipment, Premedications, Induction Agents and Muscle Relaxants
-Analgesia: Simple Analgesics, Opiates, Anti-Emetics and Local Anaesthetics
-Resus: Resuscitation Drugs, Fluids and Benzodiazepines
-ICU: Drug Infusions and Antibiotics
Drugs are colour coded with the appropriate designated colour based on AAGBI standards. Antagonists are displayed with white background with colour-coded writing.
All drugs and equipment can be selected to display a summary of the uses and actions. Drug summaries include:
-Chemical Class
-Action
-Dosing Regimes for Different Uses
-Pharmacokinetics
-Pharmacodynamics
-Side Effects
-Important Notes.
All drug doses and equipment sizes are fully referenced using one of the following resources:
-Advanced Paediatric Life Support (APLS) 2010 Guidelines (Resuscitation Council UK)
-British National Formulary for Children (BNFC) 2011-2012
-Great Ormond Street Hospital Anaesthetic Formulary
Kid-eCalc has been presented internationally at the Association of Paediatric Anaesthetist and Canadian Pediatric Anesthesia Society (APA - CPAS) Annual Scientific Meeting, Glasgow, May 2010