Gloucestershire Hospitals eliminates syringe pump losses to improve patient safety and end-of-life care

Watch how Gloucestershire Hospitals eliminated syringe pump loss through a clinically safe, codesigned tracking approach using Idox iAssets.

Syringe pumps play a critical role in providing consistent pain and symptom control for patients receiving palliative and end-of-life care, both in hospital and in the community. However, like many NHS organisations, the Trust had historically faced challenges locating these highly portable devices, with around 20% going missing each year. This created avoidable delays in care, increased operational pressure on clinical and engineering teams, and resulted in unnecessary replacement costs.

To address this, the Trust worked in close partnership with Gloucestershire Managed Services Medical Engineering teams, specialist palliative care clinicians, and asset tracking partner Idox to design and implement a new, clinically led tracking solution that met both safety and operational requirements.

Rather than tracking the lockbox, which had previously proven unreliable, the team developed a redesigned approach that securely tags the syringe pump itself. The solution was co-designed with clinicians and engineers to withstand rigorous cleaning and sterilisation processes, maintain device safety and performance, and be robust enough for everyday NHS use across acute and community settings.

Since implementation, the Trust has achieved a complete elimination of lost BodyGuard T syringe pumps. This has led to faster access to pain relief for patients, improved availability of equipment for clinical teams, better return rates from community settings, and clearer visibility of devices across the Trust. The approach has also delivered significant financial savings by avoiding the need to replace lost equipment, with savings estimated at around £50,000 within the first nine months.

Samantha White, Clinical Lead for Specialist Palliative Care at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Instead of searching for equipment, our teams can focus on patients and their families. Having confidence that syringe pumps are available when and where they are needed makes a real difference to patient comfort and quality of care.”

Steve Webb, Service Delivery Manager for Medical Engineering at Gloucestershire Managed Services, added: “This has been a genuine collaboration between clinical teams, Medical Engineering, Information Governance and our asset-tracking partner. The result is a solution that works in practice, supports patient safety, and can be replicated across other types of mobile medical equipment.”

The Trust’s success has created a repeatable blueprint for monitoring other high-risk, high-value medical devices, supporting safer care and more efficient use of NHS resources. It also demonstrates the value of close collaboration between clinicians, engineers and technology partners to solve complex challenges in modern healthcare.