Why THRIV?

Our Mission

THRIV is a coalition of healthcare providers and consumers seeking to protect patients from being harmed and caregivers from unintentionally doing harm, which too often stems from IV preparation errors.

Unarguably, the safest-to-use IV medications are those arriving at the bedside unaltered in ready-to-administer (RTA) formulations, having been produced by manufacturers under FDA Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP).

However, due to limited RTA products, an increasing need for personalized dosing, drug shortages, and a stream of new drugs coming to the market, hospitals must prepare the majority of their IVs in-house. Pharmacies, whether producing batch or made-to-order items, must ensure that sterility is maintained and accuracy is achieved—that each finished product contains the correct volumes of the right ingredients (i.e., The drug. The whole drug. And nothing but the drug. So help me God).

THRIV focuses on improving IV accuracy.

The seminal study[1] on the subject indicates that 9 percent, nearly one of ten IV preparations, may involve errors (the leading issue being wrong ingredients and/or volumes)—too many of which cause patient harm and death.

Imagine if one in ten Amazon orders contained wrong products. Instead, the industry giant has an error rate below 00.1 percent and is still chasing more zeros, even though shipping the wrong book has yet to endanger a customer.

THRIV champions the universal adoption and faithful utilization of IV workflow management systems (IV-WMS) in health-system pharmacies. Such systems are proven to increase IV accuracy—preventing error, avoiding injury, saving lives, and improving quality of care.

Similar to order-fulfillment technologies employed by Amazon, IV-WMS systems have been shown to detect and intercept errors that humans unwittingly commit and fail to catch, thus making it harder for compounding personnel to get things wrong and easier to get them right. ­­­

THRIV is motivated by each patient, nurse, pharmacist, technician, and anyone else involved in preparing, approving, hanging, or receiving IVs—each of whom wants and deserves just what the doctor ordered.[2]

[1] Flynn, Pearson, and Barker. “Observational study of accuracy in compounding i.v. admixtures at five hospitals.” Am J Health-Syst Pharm. May 1, 1997; 54(8): 904-912.
[2] It is assumed that doctors’ orders have been reviewed and approved by pharmacists before entered into the preparation queue.