Integrated Auditing Platform for Safer Hospital Drug Dispensing

INDUSTRIES: Healthcare / Pharmaceutical
SERVICES: Custom Software Development & Engineering, Quality Assurance & Testing

THE COMPANY:

Medical Device Innovator Supporting Hospital Pharmacies

Our client is a leading medical device company focused on improving safety and efficiency in hospital pharmacies. Their proprietary auditing hardware plays a critical role in verifying medication accuracy. To stay ahead of market needs, the company set out to build a next-generation software platform that could tie their hardware into a fully integrated, hospital-ready drug auditing ecosystem.

THE CHALLENGE:

Automate and Scale Drug Auditing Across Hospital Environments

Our client, a leading medical device company, set out to revolutionize drug auditing in hospital pharmacies. They envisioned a next-generation platform that could streamline the drug preparation and verification process, reduce prescription turnaround time, and improve patient safety through automation and traceability.

Key objectives and challenges included:

Integration with Hospital Systems

The platform needed to interface with hospital pharmaceutical systems to receive prescription orders (via HL7), match them with known drug assembly protocols, and guide pharmacy staff through step-by-step preparation on their proprietary auditing machines.

Data Availability for Verification

Every drug audit had to be verifiable, with step-by-step image and data capture sent to a centralized system for review and approval—both on and off the auditing machines.

Matching Pre-Assembled Drugs to Prescriptions

To reduce delivery time, the system needed to match prescriptions with pre-assembled drugs when applicable, enabling faster dispensing.

Microfactory Integration

As the client expanded their offerings, they requested full integration with their automated drug compounding microfactory to ensure its output could be audited using the same workflows.

Scalability and Security

The final platform needed to support multi-hospital deployments, run either on-premises or in a secure private cloud, and adhere to strict data privacy standards typical of healthcare environments.

THE SOLUTION:

Cloud-Ready, Fully Integrated Drug Auditing Platform With Real-Time Verification and Traceability

IQ Inc. engineered a modern, scalable, and fully integrated solution from the ground up. Our approach emphasized modularity, cloud readiness, security, and tight integration with hospital and client systems.

Innovative, Cloud-Native Architecture

We built a robust web application powered by a suite of microservices, each focused on a specific domain: incoming prescriptions, drug component data, user management, auditing machine communication, and more. These services were deployed to a Kubernetes cluster, allowing each hospital to scale the system based on local demand. Deployments could be done on hospital servers or within a private cloud environment—providing flexibility and security.

High-Fidelity User Interface & Data Traceability

The React/Redux frontend (built with JavaScript and TypeScript) provided pharmacy staff and reviewers with intuitive, real-time views of prescriptions, protocols, verification steps, and audit results. Each prescription could be matched to a known protocol and verified with photo and data evidence sourced directly from the auditing machine.

  • Real-time verification screens showed prescription data side-by-side with step-by-step images and data streamed from the machine.
  • Audit data was stored in a C# Web API backend, with each service backed by its own SQL Server database.

Central Formulary for Drug Components

To ensure accurate and up-to-date drug data, we developed a central formulary service that housed the latest information from the client. Hospitals could sync their local drug components with the formulary, either fully or selectively, ensuring data accuracy and compliance.

Full System Integration

We extended our work beyond the web platform to include development and optimization of software running on the auditing machines and microfactories themselves. Communication between systems was enabled through RabbitMQ messaging, with a centralized API gateway managing secure data ingress and egress.

Security & Compliance

  • All data processing was designed to comply with healthcare data standards, using de-identified HL7 hospital prescription messages during validation and testing.
  • Role-based access control, encrypted data transfers, and containerized deployment ensured a high level of cybersecurity and auditability.

Agile & DevOps Approach

  • The project was managed with an Agile development process, delivering value incrementally over several years.
  • CI/CD pipelines ensured reliable builds and deployments to both internal test environments and customer-facing production systems.

What can IQ Inc do for you?

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