Vigilant Is Digitizing Medication Tracking in the Hospital

A doctor and an expert in hospital logistics have teamed up to create a new platform for automating and digitizing medication tracking in the hospital and during surgery. By eliminating handwritten labels on medications they’re reducing errors and improving life for nurses.

The Challenge

It’s well known that healthcare lags behind many other industries when it comes to basic technology upgrades. Medical bills are often sent by mail, in paper form. Requests for patient records often arrive by fax. And nurses have to painstakingly label syringes by hand in order to track what medications have been given.

This last example is an anomaly of today’s out-of-date healthcare system that many patients are unaware of, but which would doubtless leave them very concerned. Today, when a nurse changes an IV, it has to be labeled, dated, and color coded according to its expiration date, all by hand. Nurses are required to calculate the hours required for each drug in the moment and code them according to the day they need to be changed.

When a nurse goes to the drug cabinet for insulin and pulls the insulin into a syringe, the syringe must then be labeled. While many drugs arrive pre-labeled, 30% are unlabeled and also require additional handwritten labeling. Administering a drug in the middle of surgery, an anesthesiologist must write on the syringe and immediately enter the data, all the while preserving a patient’s life.

Imagine attempting to write legibly on the curved side of a narrow syringe in the middle of surgery. Envision a nurse, moving from patient to patient in an overcrowded hospital, handwriting crucial information on each IV tube, every syringe. This often results in illegible, smudged, smeared information. Or worse, because it’s so difficult and time-consuming, the medication tracking doesn’t happen at all. When that happens, the results can be fatal.

This isn’t a theoretical concern. In one well-publicized case, a man was admitted for a standard procedure. He had two pumps running, neither had been labeled, and one was fentanyl. When the nurse confused the two, he died. In another case, a patient nearly died when an anesthesia provider failed to label a syringe, mixed up the drug with another, and wrongly administered it.

Medication tracking in the hospital and surgical setting isn’t something that should be analogue anymore. Handwriting on syringes and mental math about dosing need to go the way of the fax machine. It’s time for a digital upgrade to the process of medication tracking that makes patients safer and gives nurses the tools they need to succeed and thrive.

That’s the mission behind Vigilant, one of the newest members of the StartUp Health portfolio.

Origin Story

Vigilant was born out of a serendipitous partnership.

It began when Peter Baek, MD, almost made a big mistake. Dr. Baek was actively working as an anesthesiologist when he nearly administered the wrong drug to a patient due to an unlabeled syringe. It shook him up; then as he thought about it longer he realized this problem wasn’t his alone. For a solution to work, Dr. Baek believed it must be easy. If the medication labeling solution could not be completed within a matter of seconds, it wouldn’t be used by overworked nurses. He was well aware of the daily challenge doctors and nurses face as they seek to care well.

In 2016, Dr. Baek decided that he would create a solution himself. As a hobby-programmer, Dr. Baek went to work and founded Vigilant. A few others who had experience with printers, sales, and fundraising joined him in the effort. When the anesthesiologist who had made a nearly fatal mistake asked Dr. Baek for a solution, Vigilant had found their first customer. Vigilant launched at a large hospital and, today, this hospital remains their largest customer with over 90 units installed and a compliance rate greater than 99%.

In 2020, Vigilant received its first two patents. During the dawning of the COVID pandemic, CEO Fox Holt joined the team and raised $300k in capital. Fox came with years of experience selling printers to hospitals and a background in startup businesses and finance. This initial round of funding allowed the company to expand from anesthesiology to other parts of the hospital. Dr. Baek had developed a product that would make clinicians more productive and effective. Together, they believed that something as simple as a sales pitch for a new printer and labels could save lives.

Given Dr. Baek’s own background, Vigilant’s initial focus was in anesthesiology. Quickly, their product was expanded to serve other areas of the hospital. Vigilant then moved to the ICU, focusing on labels for IV tubes. Now, Vigilant’s products serve the operating room, emergency room, pharmacy, PACU, and beyond. They have developed labeling solutions for every area of the hospital.

Under the Hood

The heart of Vigilant’s product is a concept so easy to comprehend it’s hard to believe it isn’t more widely available. Instead of forcing nurses to write and calculate information by hand on the side of a syringe or IV, Vigilant installs a printer and scanner in the hospital that can print labels with all of the information necessary to track a given medication.

Vigilant software is installed directly onto a Honeywell printer. The system comes with a multi-colored series of labels. As a drug is pulled and a barcode is scanned, the software translates the drug name, date and time, and hospital-specific rules for that drug. The clinician’s badge may also be scanned and included on the label. Within two seconds, the label is then printed with this specific information, providing a place for the clinicians initials. The label is simply removed from its backing and placed directly on the syringe, vial, or tube.

An anesthesiologist entering into the operating room chooses the type of surgery, enters the bar code for the set of drugs to be used in that surgery, prints labels, and places each on a syringe. Once the drug is administered, they scan it and the system automatically records it in. A nurse changing an IV simply scans the barcode, prints all three labels, color coordinated according to the day of the week.

Getting started with Vigilant is easy. A new hospital purchases the software-fueled printer for an initial fee of $1,495. Since the solution doesn’t require a network, it can be installed and used right away, without going through the hospital’s IT department. A yearly maintenance fee of $300 covers new drugs and bi-annual software updates. Labels for the printer are purchased from Vigilant at the same price as the old labels. Training takes no more than two minutes.

Why We’re Proud to Invest

Over a few short years, Vigilant has made a big splash. They are currently in eighteen of the top forty health systems. With a conversion rate of 92%, Vigilant has discovered that if they can get a pilot into a hospital, it doesn’t come out.

With more than 6,000 hospitals in the United States, the market opportunity is $1.2B, says Fox Holt. Arriving on the market with vast experience and knowledge in both medications and printing, Vigilant is focused on the details. They know and feel what doctors and nurses need. They intentionally use thermal printers which they know are best for hospitals. The team has thought through every part of the problem and the solution. Their product is a smart design and a necessary fix.

In addition to solving a critical need in medication tracking, Vigilant brings newly-generated data to bear for the hospital system. This helps hospitals level-up their compliance reporting and mine medication analytics for new efficiencies. Bottom line: Vigilant digitizes a side of the healthcare business that has lagged behind for far too long. Formerly-analogue medication labels will now be scannable, trackable, and predictable. It’s about time.

→ Connect with the Vigilant team

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Vigilant Is Digitizing Medication Tracking in the Hospital was originally published in StartUp Health on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

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