SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio woman has spent the last decade developing a product and creating a company that aims to clearly label IV medications and reduce the risk of patients receiving the incorrect medication.
“In 50% of facilities, there’s nothing used,” said Elizabeth Friedman, founder and CEO of Safen. “No labels at all.”
Often, Friedman said, stickers or a piece of tape are wrapped around an IV line so that medical staff can quickly identify the medication a patient is receiving.
“This is a nurse workaround,” Friedman said. “It can get wet and smudge. You can’t read it. You can’t depend on it.”
It’s a problem her husband noticed while working in the medical field.
Friedman, who has a background in clinical nutrition, founded Safen to develop plastic tags that snap onto IV lines.
“This communication is visual and it’s tactile and there is no technology in it,” Friedman said.
The tags are labeled with the medication type and have corresponding shapes, symbols and colors that medical staff can read and identify by touch.
The goal of Friedman’s product is to address what is described as “spaghetti syndrome,” which refers to a jumble of wires, cords and tubes connected to a patient.
That chaos can cause confusion for medical staff, especially if they have to trace each IV line back to the IV bag to identify the source of the medicine, according to Friedman.
“Fifty-eight percent of medication errors with IV lines are due to line labeling confusion,” Friedman said.
Friedman cited the statistic from a study published in the Canadian Journal of Hospital Pharmacy.
Friedman said her products are just as much for patients and patient advocates as they are for doctors and nurses.
By clearly labeling the medication type with bold, brightly-colored tags, Friedman believes patients will have more precise knowledge of the medications they are receiving and feel more empowered to ask medical staff questions about those medications.
“I wanted to make the world a safer place for all patients,” Friedman said. “And one day, we will all be a patient somewhere, sometime, somehow,”
Safen tags have been on the market for approximately a year and are being used in medical facilities in multiple states. They are not currently being used in San Antonio.
In 2023, Friedman was honored by the Louise H. Batz Patient Safety Foundation for her innovation.
The foundation was created to honor Louise Batz, a San Antonio woman who died as a result of a medication error following knee replacement surgery.
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