New Delhi, Dec 10 (IANS): To improve patient-safety during medical treatment, the India chapter of Infusion Nurses Society (INS), a coalition of global academic healthcare professionals, will early next year launch a "National Data Repository" for infusion therapy to help gauge the extent of inadvertent medical errors and infections at city hospitals.

Infusion therapy involves the administration of medication through a needle, which if wrongly practiced can lead to complications, causing an increase in mortality, morbidity, duration of hospital stay and healthcare costs.

According to WHO, one out of every 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care and around 1.4 million people worldwide suffer from infections acquired in hospitals.

"The INS national repository will help ascertain the magnitude of medication errors, treatment related complications and healthcare associated infections which are missing as of today," said Binu Sharma, President INS India in a statement.

"Without making hospital names public, the initiative will use data to help ascertain the magnitude of the problem and suggest a way forward. The data will be pooled and published as national benchmarks and utilized for development of evidence based protocols and actions for improvement," she said.

The National Data Repository will be launched by Infusion Nurses Society in association with Becton and Dickinson (BD), a medical technology company.

Sharma said that the complications arising from unsafe infusion practice can have long term effects on patient care, patient satisfaction and length of stay.

The Infusion Nurses Society (India Chapter) had also recently launched the first ever guidelines for infusion nursing and online e-learning course for nursing professionals to ensure that quality healthcare is guaranteed to patients.

Varun Khanna, Managing Director, BD India said, "Many infusion therapy complications are preventable if hospitals upgrade to new quality tools and adopt best medical practices."

"We are working to make Indian nurses and related healthcare professionals better aware and trained to protect patients from medication errors as well as associated infections by following safe infusion practices that are the standard worldwide," he said.