Cool Technology « Jerry Fahrni

Category Archives: Cool Technology

A view of pharmacy through Google Glass [simulated]

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

I haven’t been this excited about a technology in quite some time. Google Glass makes hands-free operation a reality in the pharmacy. I don’t think it’s a long term fix as I believe that robotics will likely take over the distribution process someday, but not today. Today robotics remains expensive and clumsy.

Unfortunately Google Glass is hard to come by. And there’s little chance I’ll get my hands on any (one?) in the foreseeable future. I did however stumble across a website that allows one to create a reasonable facsimile of what the view through Google Glass might be like.

So I took a minute and did a quick mock-up of what a pharmacy technician might see if they were directed to pull a medication from a static shelf while wearing Google Glass. Click on the image below to get the full effect. A little information along with a little augmented reality (red box and arrow) would be cool.

I think technology like this would be a great addition to any product that utilizes barcode scanning or requires photos. “Ok, glass, take photo”. Products like DoseEdge or Pharm-Q In The Hood that utilize cameras to document the compounding process could benefit from being able to snap a quick hands-free photo with only a voice command. Crud, you’re already looking at the product, which means Glass is too.

ResolutionMD diagnostic imaging for Android clears FDA

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

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MobiHealthNews: “Calgary Scientific announced this week that the US Food and Drug Administration had cleared its ResolutionMD software for diagnostic medical imaging on Android devices, including the Samsung Galaxy.

Calgary Scientific claims that its ResolutionMD software, which now has six FDA clearances is the first diagnostic imaging app cleared for use on mobile devices, according to the company.

In 2012 a study at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix found that radiologists using ResolutionMD Mobile versus a traditional PACS workstation were able to access CT scans of stroke victims 24 percent faster, according to the company. Calgary Scientific says the study found its software saved an average of 11 minutes per patient. This data appears to be new as our report at the time focused on the accuracy of the diagnoses instead of the specific time to diagnosis.”

This is cools stuff. It’s also good timing. I was talking to a colleague today about where I think Android in heading in healthcare. What I see is similar to what I saw in the early days of iOS when it was just starting to gain traction in the healthcare arena.

I’ll be at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix in a couple weeks, maybe they’ll let me check it out.

MedFolio, more medication compliance technology

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

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Seems like everyone has some piece of technology designed to help patients with medication adherence and/or compliance.

What’s interesting to me is the number of different approaches there are out there to solve the problem. MedFolio looks similar to the old style medication organizers. It’s probably the most labor intensive solution I’ve seen, but then again it may be the most useful. Hard to say. From the videos I found on YouTube it looks like it’s been around for a while.
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Cool Pharmacy Technology – AdhereTech “smart pill bottle”

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

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I came across this today, the AdhereTech “smart pill bottle”. Not sure exactly how it works as the information on the website is a bit vague, but it appears to utilize sensors inside the bottle to measure content. What’s cool about it is that the bottle will provide information on both oral solids as well as liquids. That’s unique in the products that I’ve seen in the past.

“Our bottles measure the exact amount of pills or liquid in the bottle in real-time, wirelessly send this HIPAA-compliant data into the cloud, and remind patients to take their medication via automated phone call or text message.”

Medication adherence is a hot topic in healthcare these days, and AdhereTech is obviously trying to take advantage of it. Their blog is full of articles related to the topic.

I would like to have provided more information on the AdhereTech bottle, but information on the product is scarce. I couldn’t find a single video explaining the product in detail.

According to Josh Stein, the co-founder and CEO the company is preparing for several pilot projects to test the efficacy of their bottles compared to standard medication vials. The tests are scheduled to start in Q2 of 2013 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and The University of Pennsylvania.

One other cool thing about AdhereTech is that they have an open API. “AdhereTech can integrate with all existing apps, programs, and adherence solutions.”

I’ll be keeping an eye out for updates on this product. It’s an interesting concept. I hope to see it in the wild very soon.

Xenex device uses UV light to kill infectious organisms

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

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I thought this was pretty cool. Simple, yet effective.

Syracuse.com: “St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center has stepped up its war against potentially deadly patient infections by unleashing killer robots. The hospital is using two robots, that resemble R2D2 from Star Wars, to kill germs in patient rooms with powerful blasts of ultraviolet light. After trying out the device last summer, St. Joe’s quickly saw a more than 50 percent decrease in its rate of Clostridium difficile – C. diff for short – infections. That highly contagious bug is rampant in hospitals and nursing homes. It can make patients very sick and sometimes kill them.” – That’s a big deal, especially when you’re talking about something as problematic as C. diff.
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fMRI study uncovers mechanism for drug cravings

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

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This article at Medical Xpress caught my interest because I’ve been reading Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku, which spends a fair amount of time talking about fMRI.

“An fMRI machine uses “echoes” created by radio waves to peer inside living tissue. This allows us to pinpoint the location of the various signals, giving us spectacular 3-D images of inside the brain…

The fMRI scans allows scientists to locate the presence of oxygen contained within hemoglobin in the blood. Since oxygenated hemoglobin contains the energy that fuels cell activity, detecting the flow of this oxygen allows one to trace the flow of thoughts in the brain.

…fMRI scans can even detect the motion of thoughts in the living brain to a resolution of .1 millimeter, or smaller than the head of a pin, which corresponds to perhaps a few thousand neurons. An fMRI can thus give three-dimensional pictures of the energy flow inside the thinking brain to astonishing accuracy…”

According to the Medical Xpress article:

“Cues such as the sight of drugs can induce cravings and lead to drug-seeking behaviors and drug use. But cravings are also influenced by other factors, such as drug availability and self-control. To investigate the neural mechanisms involved in cue-induced cravings the researchers studied the brain activity of a group of 10 smokers, following exposure to cigarette cues under two different conditions of cigarette availability. In one experiment cigarettes were available immediately and in the other they were not. The researchers combined a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The results demonstrate that in smokers the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) tracks the level of craving while the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DPFC) is responsible for integrating drug cues and drug availability. Moreover, the DPFC has the ability to suppress activity in the OFC when the cigarette is unavailable. When the DPFC was inactivated using TMS, both craving and craving-related signals in the OFC became independent of drug availability.”

Cool stuff.

Article referenced: Takuya Hayashi, Ji Hyun Ko, Antonio P. Strafella, Alain Dagher; “Dorsolateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex interactions during self-control of cigarette craving.” PNAS, January 2013, DOI:10.1073/pnas.1212185110

Firefighers in Australia using ingestible capsule to monitor core body temperature

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

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Engadget: “A new swallowable pill has been trialled with 50 firefighters in Australia, aimed at monitoring body temperatures and other vital readings when working under extreme conditions. Using Equivital’s VitalSense Core Temperature capsules, they transmit readings to the companion EQ02 LifeMonitor, housed on the chest. This then sends data on skin temperature, heart rate and respiration rate to an external computer.”

The ingestible capsule works in conjunction with Hidalgo‘s Equivital belt. According to medGadget the belt is the same one “used by Felix Baumgartner in his brilliant Red Bull Stratos jump”.

I have to admit, this is both creepy and cool all at the same time. The capsule, along with all the tech wizardry is made by Equivital.

Image credit news.com.au

Cool Pharmacy Technology – Diana Hazardous Drug Compounding System

Posted on December 26, 2012 by Jerry Fahrni

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I came across the Diana Hazardous Drug Compounding System from icumedical while doing a little internet surfing the other day. As the name implies it’s a small, closed-looped system designed for compounding hazardous medications, i.e. chemotherapy.

The “Diana System” utilizes a dual channel system, one for small volume and another for larger volumes. It’s a little difficult to understand exactly what the device does without seeing it in action, which is what the video below is for. It’s a pretty cool concept. I like the fact that it’s compact and needleless, but there are a couple of things I’d like to see added to the device. It appears that there is a lot of manual programming with the “Diana System”. It would be nice if it was integrated with the pharmacy information system so that it could utilize barcode scanning to automate the programming, much like what we see on the newer generation of smart pumps that are hitting the market.

From the website:

Accurate, safe, and efficient hazardous drug compounding technology right at your fingertips.

User-controlled automated compounding for maximum accuracy & safety. Unlike automated technologies that require huge investments and do not fit within existing workflows, the Diana system cost-effectively keeps pharmacists and technicians in control of the compounding process from beginning to end.
Closed system assures safety of clinicians and the sterility of the mix.The Diana system fits under the hood of your biological safety cabinet and protects clinicians from exposure to hazardous drugs and accidental needlesticks while protecting the patient preparation from exposure to environmental contaminants.
Reduces risk of repetitive stress injuries. Free up pharmacists and technicians from many of the repetitive motions required during preparation and reconstitution and reduce the stresses and injuries that can occur as a result.
Increases efficiencies and reduces drug waste. By helping you improve the efficiency of high-volume compounding, the Diana system can deliver workflow efficiencies while helping you reduce drug waste by extracting every drop of drug from every container.

Augmented reality has potential for use in pharmacy

Posted on December 9, 2012 by Jerry Fahrni

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Augmented reality has been a standard of science fiction for decades, but now it’s a reality. We all remember the Starbucks app that made the Red Holiday Cup come to life last year, right? If not here’s a video on YouTube. Of course that’s just the tip of the iceberg as Google and Microsoft have both started playing with the concept; Google with Project Glass and Microsoft by filing a patient with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “event augmentation with real-time information” last year. Google’s Project Glass was even named one of 2012’s best inventions by TIME.

Setting aside the marketing hype for such things for a minute consider the practical uses in pharmacy practice for something like Google’s Project Glass. Imagine two similar, but distinctly different scenarios:
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Cool Pharmacy Technology – NFC-enabled medication compliance

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Jerry Fahrni

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Thanks to Timothy Aungst for the tip. His Tweet led me to this Quand Medical page where I found a little bit of information about their medication compliance software. Their solution utilizes NFC technology to aid patients with tracking and taking their medication as well as potentially reducing errors.

The Tweet from Timothy was timely as I’ve been musing about using NFC technology in the medication use process. With the popularity of smartphones and the slow, but steady adoption of things like Google Wallet, it makes sense to take a deeper dive and give the technology a long hard look.

I would have liked to have seen a video of the product in action, but I couldn’t find one. Who knows whether or not this is the solution for medication compliance, but it’s certainly a tool worth investigation.
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