Infusion pumps see a surge in demand

The infusion pumps have been in use for four decades, with their applications increasing steadily. The demand for infusion pumps has increased phenomenally due to the outbreak of COVID-19.

Infusion pumps are generally utilized to deliver fluids including nutrients and medications such as insulin, chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, pain relievers and hormones into a patient’s body in a controlled manner.

Global market
The global infusion pumps market is expected to reach USD 18.9 billion by 2025 from an estimated value of USD 13.5 billion in 2020, growing at a CAGR of 7 percent during the five-year period.

The growing demand for portable infusion pumps to minimize the healthcare expenditure has escalated the market. Also, the biggest technology trend of wireless capability products is driving demand. Rising investments in R&D by the leading market players to bring about further innovations and advancements in their existing product range is also providing the requisite impetus.

The key global players in this segment are Becton Dickinson, B.Braun Melsungen, Baxter, Fresenius Kabi, ICU Medical, Medtronic, Moog, Smiths Medical, Terumo, Roche Diagnostics, Halyard Health, Mindray Medical and Micrel Medical Devices.

North America dominated the intravenous infusion pumps market and accounted for a revenue share of 49.1 percent in 2019 owing to constant innovations in advanced medical devices technologies.

In Asia Pacific, the market is expected to witness a significant CAGR of 6.4 percent over the forecast period. This is attributed to lower upfront cost, rising socio-economic factors in developing countries, and ever-escalating incidences of several chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes, cystic fibrosis, and arthritis, which will play a major role in the growth of the market in this region.

Europe is also a major market for infusion pumps and is expected to contribute 32 percent to the market in 2023.

A number of factors, such as the increasing incidence of chronic diseases along with the rapid growth in the geriatric population, rising demand for ambulatory infusion pumps, and the growing volume of surgical procedures performed, are driving the infusion pumps market. In addition, untapped, emerging markets such as India and China and the growing adoption of specialty infusion pumps are offering significant growth opportunities for players operating in the infusion pumps market. However, product recalls, stringent regulatory requirements for new products, and the increasing adoption of refurbished infusion pumps are restraining the growth of this market to a certain extent.

The market for infusion pumps has been ever growing pertaining to its developmental dynamics. One of the key factors driving competitiveness among market players is the shift in technology, automation, and standardized dosing, the extensive adoption of advanced healthcare technology for improved healthcare services.

Safety concerns coupled with product recalls, complications associated with infusion pumps, stringent regulations, and increase in usage of refurbished and rental infusion pumps are restraining the growth of global infusion pump market.

Vendor update
Some of the recent developments in the infusion pumps industry are:

• In October 2019, B. Braun Medical Inc. announced integration and deployment of their Space Infusion Pump Systems with Stanley Healthcare’s software platform, Aeroscout RTLS MobileView. The collaboration between B.Braun and Stanley Healthcare follows integrating the healthcare enterprise (IHE) standards, and the combined solution includes a bi-directional interface capability designed to help improve patient safety, optimize asset utilization, and increase staff efficiency.

• In January 2020, Medtronic, Ireland launched Efficio networked with the SynchroMed II intrathecal drug delivery system. This enables clinicians to efficiently manage their drug delivery pump practices. It also aids them in treating patients with cancer, chronic pain, and severe spasticity.

• In August 2020, Ivenix, Inc., developed a smart infusion pump called Epic, which helps eliminate infusion-based patient injury. This particular innovation will most likely enable to boost patient outcomes, operational efficiency and clinical quality in infusion delivery.

Smart pumps gain adoption
Medication errors were causing concern in hospitals and operating rooms. Greater than 50 percent of medication errors that lead to patient injury occur during the medication administration phase. The advent of smart infusion pumps allowed for clinical decision support tools to be integrated into the medication administration process.

This decision support in smart infusion pumps includes minimum and maximum alerts for dose, concentration, duration, and rate alerts and is part of the dose error reduction software (DERS) that exists in the majority of infusion pumps on the market today. This decision support can prevent misprogramming of pumps or keystroke errors (examples of this type of error would be programming 55 mg instead of 5 mg).

Smart pumps have been instrumental in eliminating intravenous medication administration errors, particularly with respect to dosage for the most vulnerable patients. Smart pumps with drug libraries have increasingly gained adoption in acute care patient settings including the perioperative area.

They enable the delivery of IV fluids and medications within the bounds of preset parameters, such as drug concentration and dose. They can also be programmed to deliver a bolus dose over a preset time interval, and can calculate weight-based dosing schemes automatically. Most important is the decision support capabilities of a dose error-reduction system, which are composed of institution-specific ranges for each drug. The user is alerted when the programmed dose (or concentration or duration of infusion) differs from the preset minimal or maximal limits. Depending on the drug and institutional preference, these alerts are divided into ‘soft limits’, that are manually overridable, and ‘hard limits’, that cannot be overridden. Drug libraries can also be divided into different clinical care areas. For example, anaesthesia care providers can have different soft and hard limits than other types of clinicians. Smart pumps are thus able to provide real-time feedback to reduce medication infusion errors, and improve patient safety. Smart infusion pump use has been shown to reduce patient harm from injectable medications, but safety features must be utilized to realize the full benefits of the technology.

COVID-19. Hospitals fighting the novel coronavirus are not only experiencing shortages of ventilators and personal protective equipment​ but also of infusion pumps critical for providing medications and fluids to the growing number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Recognizing increased demand for infusion pumps, FDA on April 5, 2020 issued guidance at spurring access to the devices for patients infected with COVID-19 who may require continuous infusion of medications, nutrition, and/or other fluids. Changes to the pumps could include a modification in design, intended use, material, chemical composition, energy source, or manufacturing process. The FDA’s guidance also sought to promote remote monitoring of infusion pumps so providers and COVID-19 patients can maintain safe distances from each other.

While hospitals are not yet remotely managing these devices, they are putting infusion pumps in hallways, rather than in patients’ rooms, and using long tubing to help reduce nurses’ exposure to the virus and conserve PPE. Extension sets enable hospitals to run that tubing under doors and sometimes through makeshift holes in walls. And the rising adoption of this workaround has led to yet another shortage, of the tubing extensions sets themselves!