Medication Delivery Fact Sheet

2007 Sales

$4.2 Billion

Committed to Efficiency, Value and a Safer Healthcare Environment

Baxter was the first commercial manufacturer of sterile intravenous (IV) solutions in glass bottles, and later revolutionized IV therapy by introducing the first plastic IV containers. The company was the first to introduce flexible, closed-systems for the delivery of intravenous medications, as well as the first and only electronic infusion pump to offer automatic tube-loading.

Today, Baxter's Medication Delivery business is a leading manufacturer of IV solutions and a range of specialty pharmaceuticals and devices that help physicians, pharmacists, and nurses effectively deliver critical fluids and drugs to patients. From the emergency and operating rooms through recovery, these products follow the patient through the continuum of care helping provide fluid replenishment, general anesthesia, parenteral nutrition, pain management, antibiotic therapy, chemotherapy and other therapies.

Medication error is a growing concern in healthcare. In the United States alone, it is estimated that medication errors contribute to more than 7,000 deaths per year. For over 75 years, Baxter has pioneered products designed to help reduce errors throughout the medication management process by improving the interface between technology and clinicians. For example, to help prevent accidental needle-stick injuries, Baxter introduced the industry's first “needleless” IV access system. Baxter also set a new industry standard with the introduction of its bar code technology, the first bar code for flexible, plastic IV containers that incorporates lot number and expiration date. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration advocates the use of effective bar coding to help prevent adverse drug events and provide healthcare cost savings.

Baxter was a pioneer in forming alliances with leading pharmaceutical companies to formulate and package their drugs for delivery, offering contract services and proprietary technologies focused on injectable or pulmonary delivery. The business is uniquely positioned to support its pharmaceutical partners' product life cycles from development through patent expiration. Its enhanced packaging portfolio includes ready-to-use and ready-to mix products that provide product differentiation and simplify the preparation and administration process, helping to reduce medication errors. Baxter continues to expand its industry-leading line of premixed and frozen drugs.

Contract manufacturing services include form/fill/finish of drugs into syringes, vials and cartridges, as well as lyophilization capabilities. Baxter's facilities also provide clinical and commercial manufacturing capacity to meet the needs of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies requiring insoluble formulation technology.

Baxter's infusion pumps, IV tubing and access devices provide caregivers with integrated choices to help control the delivery of IV fluids to patients. The company's infusion pump portfolio includes offerings that enable clinicians to administer multiple IV solutions simultaneously to a patient from a single pump; deliver a wide range of infusion rates to accommodate use throughout the hospital – from the neonatal unit to the emergency room, and offer features that enable caregivers to establish limits for specific drugs to enhance patient safety and help reduce medication-programming errors. Baxter also manufactures anesthesia and pain-management pumps, and ambulatory IV infusion systems.

Baxter develops, manufactures and markets a range of specialty pharmaceuticals and delivery devices that assist anesthesia and critical care clinicians and oncologists worldwide in providing high standards of patient care. Specialty pharmaceuticals include branded and generic injectables, inhaled anesthetic agents and injectable oncolytics. With its acquisition of ESI Lederle, Baxter became one of the largest sterile injectable manufacturers in the world. Devices include spinal and epidural regional anesthesia trays and consciousness monitoring devices.

Parenteral nutrition is often used as a supplemental therapy for patients who cannot adequately receive oral or enteral nutrition. Baxter offers a range of products that provide complete and balanced nutrition by IV infusion including macronutrient solutions (dextrose, amino acids and lipids) and micronutrients (vitamins). In addition, the business provides automated compounding systems that help hospital pharmacists or compounding centers prepare patient-specific nutritional therapy. Baxter innovated the delivery of parenteral nutrition therapy in Europe via a multi-chamber bag concept and pioneered the automated compounding technology that is widely accepted in the U.S. pharmacy practice today.