Patent ID: 7895053

Claim:
A medication management system, for use with an information system and first and second input means; wherein the first input means delivers a medication order prescribed for a patient to the information system; and wherein the second input means inputs machine-readable patient-specific, drug container specific, and medical device specific delivery information from the patient, drug container, and medical device respectively; comprising: a medical device adapted to perform a medication delivery order based upon a medication order prescribed for a patient; and a medication management unit adapted for electronic communication with the information system, the medical device and the second input means, the medication management unit having a processing unit and a storage medium coupled to the processing unit, the storage medium containing an expert rule set and programming code executed by the processing unit to separately receive at a first time a first medication delivery order for a first drug and at a second time that is different from the first time a second medication delivery order for a second drug from the information system as separate and distinct current patient medical orders, -and then compare the first and second delivery orders with the expert rule set to determine if there is drug-drug incompatibility based on delivery to the patient in a given requested time sequence according to the current patient medical orders; wherein, if drug-drug incompatibility is found, then the medication management unit programming code automatically dynamically determines from the expert rule set a suggested time delay interval between delivery of the first and second medication delivery orders that would avoid drug-drug incompatibility; and wherein the medication management unit programming code automatically transmits a command to the medical device to add the suggested time delay between the delivery times of the first and second medication delivery orders.