I came across the HealthOneMed Dispense-A-Pill (DAP) Personal Medication Manager while surfing the ‘net one afternoon earlier this week. It’s basically a miniature ADU with pie-shaped wedge slots for personal medications. I thought it was pretty slick.
Apparently National Influenza Vaccination Week (NIVW) is next week. Who knew?
The CDC has additional information on NIVW here, and a whole lot more information on seasonal influenza (Flu) as well. Need to know more about types of influenza viruses? No problem, you can find that at the CDC site too. The most common form of influenza is Type A. For most healthy people the flu is self-limiting. Sure you feel like crap for a few days, but you get over it and truck on. With that said, influenza can be quite dangerous to elderly and those with compromised immune systems. Get vaccinated.
About a year ago I left the comforts of the pharmacy and struck out into the world of product management. It’s not all that dramatic really. I simply thought I needed a change so I jumped over to the dark side and went to work for a company that builds pharmacy automation and technology. Why not, I love pharmacy technology. The move made perfect sense to me at the time.
I grabbed a coffee filter this morning to make a pot of coffee – something I’ve done hundreds of times – when I had a moment of nostalgia. The coffee filter took me back to my days in organic chemistry class in college when I used to create my own fluted filters for gravity filtration. I can’t tell you why I had the flashback. Perhaps it’s my body trying to deal with the 50 pounds of food I’ve ingested over the past couple of days; who knows.
Fluting filter paper is common practice in high school and college chemistry labs across the country. The process is done to increase the speed of the filtration process and give one a larger surface area onto which to collect the sample. Pretty low tech, but cool nonetheless.
MedVantx, Inc., has announced the deployment of its patent pending Patient Profile™ patient medication and adherence reporting engine across its network of 3,600 high prescribing primary care providers participating in the Company’s integrated program of initial free medication therapy, adherence management and home delivery program. This new program utilizes the Company’s proprietary automated ATM like sample management system (“MedStart™“) and an integrated secure web reporting portal to provide physicians visibility to their patients’ adherence to chronic medication therapy…
The MedStart™ system automates the traditional sampling process for the physician; captures physician sampling data for inclusion in the patients’ claims history medical record and provides consumers access to highly relevant drug and disease state educational materials. Since patients don’t always get prescriptions filled, physicians can enhance adherence by providing their patients with initial therapy and better informational tools to manage their conditions right from the office…
Now with the availability of the MedVantx Patient Profile™, physicians are able to view data about how patients, on an individual basis, are complying with their prescribed medication treatments. By showing exactly when a patient fills prescriptions, physicians can detect late refills, gaps in medication fulfillment, discontinued treatments and more to accurately access and improve patient compliance.
Interesting concept. I often wonder if simply getting rid of chain and grocery store pharmacies, and going back to neighborhood community practices would be the best way to improve patient medication compliance. I’ve worked in chain, grocery store and community pharmacies and have always felt that the small community practice knows their patients best and provides the best patient care when it comes to medication management. Something to think about anyway.
More on the system mentioned above can be found at the MedVantx website.
The abstract below caught my attention. I can’t read the entire article because I don’t have a subscription to the journal (a pet peeve of mine – just sayin’). Nonetheless I found the abstract quite interesting. I think the conclusion is a bit overly optimistic, but the use of computers to calculate an optimized medication schedule for individual patients is a promising idea. (Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2011 Dec;104(3):514-9. Epub 2011 Oct 5.)
Abstract
Medication adherence tends to affect the recovery of patients. Patients having poor medication adherence show a worsening of their condition and/or increased complications. Unfortunately, between 20% and 50% of chronic patients are unable to manage their medications. This study proposes a model to improve the patients’ medication compliance by reducing medication frequency.Published studies have shown that, based on the patients’ lifestyle, simplification of the medication frequency and remodeling of the medication schedule is able to help improve medication adherence. Therefore, this study tried to simplify medication frequency by combining therapies. Moreover, by adjusting according to lifestyle, the study also tries to remodel medication timing in relation to mealtimes to create personal medication schedules.
In this study, we used 19,393,452 outpatient prescriptions from the National Health Insurance Research Database to verify our system (algorithm optimized). At the same time, we examined the differences between the frequency summarized by general public and experts’ advice medication behavior. Compared with the experts’ advice method, this system has reduced the medication frequency in about 49% of prescriptions.
Using combined medication to simplify medication frequency is able to reduce the medication frequency significantly and improve medication adherence. Furthermore, this should also improve patient recovery, reduce drug hazards and result in less drug wastage.
I’m at the MEDICA World Forum for Medicine in Düsseldorf Germany this week. While I haven’t seen much in the way of pharmacy related products, I did come across something that I thought was pretty cool. The brochure I grabbed said it was the “Sharps Waste Eliminator†by GMP (Global Medi Products). However when I went to the GMP website for more information I couldn’t find mention of it anywhere. A little creative Googling led me to the BMTS Corp site where I found the device I was looking for. Someone should have a talk with the marketing folks at GMP. Just sayin’.
My favorite cloud music service is no longer Music Beta, but rather Google Music. Ta-da! I’ve been using Google Music for a while. I’ve found it to be quite nice. I especially like the integration with my Android based phone. Go figure.
It looks like Taber’s is available for Android and iOS. I don’t often reach for a medical dictionary, but on that rare occasion I do it’s nice to have one laying around.
Would you rather have a five pound paper volume sitting at home on your shelf or an electronic version with you at all time taking up nothing more than a little space on your smartphone or tablet? That’s a rhetorical question really, because it’s a no-brainer.
Dear USBMIS Software User:
Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, 21st Edition is now available for iPad! Taber’s is also avilable for iPhone, Android phones, and Android tablets.
iPad and iPhone Users
View in iTunesNote: If you already own the iPhone version and use the same iTunes account on your iPad, then the iPad version is free.
Android Phone and Tablet Users
View in Android MarketThe Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary app includes:
- Cyclopedic entries that offer more than just definitions.
- 60,000 reader-friendly definitions.
- 3,000 brand-new terms and 7,000 revised terms.
- Over 1,000 full-color illustrations.
- More than 600 Patient Care Statements.
- Caution Statements with easy-to-find icons.
- Dozens of Allied Health and Nursing Appendices.
Sincerely,
USBMIS Development Team
I think a key for the future of pharmacy will be for pharmacy leaders to learn how to engage the C-Suite within their own healthcare system. That makes the content of this webinar from Pharmacy OneSource particularly interesting.
Wednesday, December 14th: "Effective Pharmacy Interactions with ‘The C-Suite’"
Jim Jorgenson, RPh, MS, FASHPReserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/340160290
Jim Jorgenson, Chief Pharmacy Officer and Vice President of Indiana University Health, will provide the pharmacist with background information about the current healthcare environment, with an emphasis on how the hospital/health-system and priorities of the C-Suite are affected. The overall goal is to enable the pharmacist to gain knowledge and confidence in preparation to present to the C-Suite on topics affecting pharmacy and the medication use process. Specific case examples of presentations that worked and did not work will be provided.
Effective Pharmacy Interactions with ‘The C-Suite’
Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Time: 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM ET
Register: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/340160290