Saturday morning coffee [December 6 2014]

“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything” ~unknown

Welcome to December. Hard to believe that Christmas is right around the corner.

So much happens each and every week, and it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

MUG_SMC

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My ASHP Midyear 2014 technology loadout

I’m always tinkering with my travel bag to find just the right mix of computer technology and carrying convenience. Most recently I’ve been carrying a Yoga 2 Pro, an Asus VivoTab 8, and a Samsung Galaxy S5. The Yoga 2 Pro serves as my primary machine for pretty much everything. The VivoTab 8 is an … Read more

#ASHP Midyear 2014 game plan

ASHP Midyear is next week in Anaheim, California. I arrive in Anaheim on Sunday afternoon, and will be there until Wednesday morning. I always look forward to Midyear as it gives me an opportunity to connect with friends I haven’t seen in a while and learn some new things.

One of the great benefits that Midyear offers me is an opportunity to look at large amounts of pharmacy automation and technology in one place at the same time. Midyear is the only place where you will find so many vendors in one space. The exhibit hall is typically full, and it’s where I spend a lot of my time.

While I enjoy visiting with all the exhibitors, limited exhibit hall hours means that I have to prioritize where I spend my time.

My must-see list this year includes:

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Cool Pharmacy Technology – Eyecon Visual Counting System

It’s hard to imagine that pharmacies still manually count medications and pour them into bottle for distribution to patients, but it goes on all the time. Even large pharmacies that have robotic dispensing systems still have to manually dispense a fair number of medications for one reason or another.

Eyecon by RxMedic is an automated counting system for oral medications that uses barcode scanning technology and “machine vision” to ensure accurate medication dispensing.

Some things that I thought were interesting about Eyecon:

  • It uses barcode scanning technology to ensure that the correct medication is being used, i.e. Eyecon scans the medication barcode against the prescription label. When used properly this a good way to prevent putting the wrong drug in the patient’s bottle.
  • Use of “machine vision” to perform counting. I’m not entirely sure what “machine vision” technology is, but I hear the term often enough; especially when looking at compounding robots. According to the company, Eyecon can “detect pill fragments or foreign matter in the counting platter and alert the operator”. That’s a nice feature.
  • There are separate trays for “sulfa” and “penicillin”. You frequently see tray segregation like this in outpatient pharmacies due to fear of cross contamination and patient allergies. This little feature tells me that the person that designed Eyecon has practical experience in a pharmacy.

Couple of Eyecon videos below. The first shows a general overview of Eyecon from 2010. The second shows Eyecon being used to fill a prescription using barcode scanning technology. There are several videos posted on YouTube. Just search for “Eyecon”.

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