Android users rejoice. If you are an UpToDate subscriber, you now can download the new UpToDate Android app.
Description
Find clinical answers at the point of care or anywhere you need them! Now you can access current, synthesized clinical information from UpToDate® — including evidence-based recommendations — quickly and easily on your AndroidTM phone or tablet. This app is free to download. However, an individual subscription is required to log in and use it.
Features of UpToDate include:
• Persistent login
• Easy Search with Auto-complete
• Bookmarks and History
• Mobile-optimized Calculators
• Ability to earn CME/CE/CPD creditThis is the first public release of the Android app for UpToDate. Like the first UpToDate iOS mobile app, you need to login and you need an Internet connection. It is more convenient to have a native app rather than access UpToDate from the browser and you get more options than just the browser version. I suppose eventually UpToDate will release an “UpToDate Complete” for Android much like the iOS UpToDate Complete.
Update: It seems that this first release, although a free app, is available only to those who have access to the Google Play store in North America.
UpToDate now available for #Android
Evernote update for Android is awesome
I received an update for Evernote today on my Galaxy Nexus. And let me just say that it’s awesome. I use Evernote all the time. It’s one of the few services I pay for because it’s the best method I’ve found for collecting notes; all kids of notes. I use it to clip web pages on my tablets (all of them) as well as my smartphone, take hand written notes, collaborate with others via shared notebooks, take audio notes, store journal articles in PDF format, and so on. It’s easy to organize my notes because of the familiar tag system that Evernote uses. Simply put, Evernote is indispensable.
The biggest change with the Evernote update is the user interface. The home page is easy to use and intuitive. In addition it lets you swipe out a hidden menu just off the screen to the right to get to your notes. The navigation is more “swipe friendly” and I like it. It’s really quite slick.
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Ideas, Vision, Innovation: Fantasy vs. Reality
Simply put, I think you need an idea and a vision to be innovative. Sounds simple enough.
I’ve read that good ideas are hard to come by, vision even harder and innovation rare. I don’t buy it. I believe innovation is difficult, but probably not for the reasons you might expect. On the other hand I don’t believe that ideas are hard to come by or that vision is rare.
I think ideas are like change in your pocket and you tend to collect more than you think. If you’re like me, and I believe most people are, you probably have several ideas every day about changing how something is done, how to make something better or what the next big thing should be. You know what I mean. All those moments throughout the day when you say something like “what if they…” or “why didn’t they…” or even “wouldn’t it be cool if …”. You know what I’m talking about, like “wouldn’t it be cool if they filled marshmallows with hot fudge”. Yes, yes it would.
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News flash, not all docs happy with iPad in the hospital setting
Palmdoc Chronicles: “It looks as if most doctors and nurses would rather not touch the iPad at work (or deal with any other kind of tablet computing). They certainly won’t be making it their go-to device. “We had some instances where physicians wanted iPads – thought they wanted them – borrowed them, used them for a few days and returned them,” said Kirk Larson, a vice president and chief information officer at Children’s Hospital Central California, who spoke at the Healthcare Information Transformation conference in Jacksonville, Florida.” – This article caught my attention because I used to work at the facility mentioned in the article (Children’s Hospital Central California). The actual content isn’t really a big deal. Unlike hats, one size doesn’t necessarily fit all when it comes to tablets. Slate tablets really aren’t designed for data input. I ran into this problem nearly two years ago when the hospital I was working for at the time rolled out iPads to the pharmacists. Within a couple of weeks they were asking for their convertibles back (Dell XT2 tablet PCs).
Pharmacy student adherence to a simulated medication regimen
A Tweet from Anthony Cox (@drarcox) led me to this article in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education.
In this study, 72 second-year pharmacy students were given “medications” (Starburst JellyBeans) to take with varying administration schedules. The table below shows the results of the little experiment, and it speaks volumes.
Not surprisingly a “once daily” regimen was the easiest to follow, but still resulted in more than 10% of the doeses being missed. As the regimens grew in complexity, the percentage of missed doses increased.
We did a similar experiment with M&M’s when I was a pharmacy student at UCSF. The results were similar, i.e. the more complex the regimen, the harder it was to adhere.
Oh, and these were pharmacy students we’re talking about here. What do you think happens when you ask the average non-healthcare professional to adhere to a medication regimen?
The entire article is available for free here.
Thinking about pharmacy refrigerators
I love the Yanko Design website. It has so many cool concepts. Recently while browsing the site I cam across the Grabit, “a door handle fitted with a fingerprint scanner” (image to the right). I immediately thought of pharmacy. It would be cool to see one of these attached to all the refrigerators in the pharmacy. Anytime you wanted to get something out of the fridge you’d simply place your thumb on the fingerprint scanner as you grabbed the handle to open the door. The Grabit handle would register your fingerprint and identify you as someone that had access. And if not, you wouldn’t be able to get in. This would work well for high dollar items that you wanted to track or controlled substances that require refrigeration.
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Android App: Tarascon Prescriber’s Essentials
I never had much use for the Tarascon Pharmacopoeia, but I got a lot of mileage out of the Johns Hopkins ABX Guide.
From Google Play: Tarascon Prescriber’s Essentials
The Prescriber’s Essentials Android App is a combination of the award-winning Tarascon Pharmacopoeia and the Johns Hopkins POC-IT Center ABX Guide, now available for your Android device.
This must-have resource contains vital information on thousands of drugs and antimicrobials to help clinicians make better decisions at the point-of-care.
Prescriber’s Essentials Features Include:
- Convenient and quick portable access on your Android device
- Continuous drug updates for 12 months
- A fully integrated tool for multiple drug interaction checking
- 47 invaluable drug reference tables and 15 dynamic calculators
- Extensive pediatric drug dosing
- Anti-microbial agents
- Infectious diseases
- Commonly-encountered pathogens
Lexi-Drugs to include CHEST guideline and Beers Criteria
This is pretty cool. The CHEST guideline was always useful when it came to cardiology and the use of anticoagulants. And for those of you that don’t know, the Beers Criteria is a list of potentially inappropriate medications for use in the elderly. When I did LTC medicine we kept a pretty close eye on the “Beer’s List”.
You can find more information on Lexi-Drugs here.
Medication reconciliation on an internal medicine unit in French hospital [Article]
Interesting abstract from Presse Medicale (Paris, France) talking about medication reconciliation on an internal medicine unit in a French hospital. The authors found lots or discrepancies, which isn’t a surprise. They also found that pharmacists could help identify and correct many of the discrepancies, which also isn’t a surprise.
Like many other articles I’ve read recently, this one is from data collected quite a while ago. The information was obtained from 61 patients between June and October 2010. The article is from the March 2012 issue of the journal. I always marvel at how long it takes study results to get published.
Foiled again!
A couple of months ago I received an email from the ASHP Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology (SOPIT). It basically said, “hey dude, you’re a pharmacy informatics guy. You should throw your hat in the ring for a position on the SOPIT Executive Committee.” My initial reaction was to ignore it as these things never go well for me. My personality isn’t general suited for committee work. I know this.
However, the issue wouldn’t go away. A couple of weeks later it popped up again as a friend and colleague shot me an email asking why I hadn’t completed the on-line biographical nomination form and upload my Curriculum Vitae for a position on the SOPIT Executive Committee. I gave the canned response that I wasn’t interested and that type of thing wasn’t for me. But the seed had been planted. About a week later I logged into the ASHP website and proceeded to jump through all the hoops associated with running for one of the positions on the executive committee. You know, lots of questions about how you would change the world and make it a far better pharmacy friendly place to live.
Anyway, I was informed today via email that not only did I not get nominated for a position on the executive committee; I didn’t even make the cut to be included on the list of possible candidates. Ouch! Here’s the actual wording “The Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology’s Committee on Nominations met this month to develop a slate of candidates for the summer 2012 elections. We received many letters and nominations for the two offices of the Section. Unfortunately, we were not able to slate you for this year’s election. “ Doh!
I won’t lie, my ego took a hit. Even though I’m generally not well suited to sit on committees I thought this would be cool. Should have gone with my gut and ignored the email. Humility is a good thing, but sometimes being humbled stings a bit. Better to think you turned them down than the other way around.
I’ll eventually get over it. People are resilient that way. In the meantime I’m forming my own committee of which I will be the Executive Vice President; I’m not President material. Haven’t decided what the committee will do, but it must involve Diet Pepsi, popcorn and movies. If you’re interested in being on the committee let me know. Space is limited.
