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.

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.

Last week I was sitting at the kitchen table working when I happened to look out the window to see a busted sprinkler spewing water into the air. Bummer. My first thought wasn’t to jump up and fix it, although I did. No, my first thought was “why doesn’t someone make a sprinkler system that repairs itself”. That’s an idea. Realistic or not, it’s an idea. One could try to build a self-repairing sprinkler head if they really wanted to. Not sure how that would work, but that’s why God created engineers.

Anyway, I decided to do a little experiment where I kept track of all those “what-if moments” for a few days; turns out that I have between five and ten each day. Try it sometime. I bet you’ll find that you have a similar experience. Not all ideas are gems, of course. Some are pure garbage while some may be worth further investigation. That’s where vision comes in. If you can “see” how your idea fits into the world around you then I think you have vision. And I believe that most people know where their idea belongs, otherwise the idea wouldn’t have popped into their head. Yeah, roasted hot-fudge filled marshmallows would go real nice between two graham crackers.

The difficulty with ideas and vision comes when you try to turn them into reality. To be innovative reality requires that you turn an idea and vision into something tangible, and the problem with building something tangible is that you often have to rely on other people for help. Of course there are exceptions to every rule, i.e. small things that take off for no identifiable, reproducible reason – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc – but in general you have to get other people to buy into your idea and vision to make it happen. And therein lies the problem.

Most people have their own idea about how the world should work and it doesn’t necessarily agree with yours (or mine). That’s how we end up with such variety in everything around us, from electronics to food, cars, clothes and so on. Variety is good, but not when it compromises good ideas and a solid vision.

Have you ever tried to explain something to someone only to look up and see that they’re not on the same page as you? Sure you have. Everyone has. Sometimes vision is difficult to explain or can’t be written down. And even if you manage to explain something in a manner that makes sense, people will often want to change the idea. I think this happens with most ideas because the idea makes sense to some, but not all. I see this all the time in my current job. Battles are often waged over the weirdest things.

I often wonder how much is lost over decisions made by committee. It’s difficult to say, but I certainly think it stymies the innovative process. How many average ideas have sprung from compromise? Too many, I fear. This must be where the saying “you can’t win every battle” came from. It’s true, you can’t win them all. Unfortunately every lost battle comes at a price to someone.

I think the days of mad scientists working alone in their labs are over, and that makes me a bit sad. Just because the process has evolved doesn’t mean it’s better.

It’s a strange world we live in.

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.

After seeing the Grabit handle on the Yanko Design website I started looking into other ideas for refrigerators, and what better place to look for pharmacy refrigerators than Sears. All joking aside, I figured it would be better to look at consumer refrigerators because let’s face it; pharmacy refrigerators don’t exactly have a great track record for being cutting-edge technology.

One of the refrigerators that I thought was pretty cool was the Kenmore Elite Gran-N-Go French-Door Refrigerator. This refrigerator has a small door within a door. The Grab-N-Go door keeps often-used items in a small compartment accessible via a simple push button on the handle. The design lends itself to the Grabit door handle design. The outer door with the push button could easily be fitted with a fingerprint scanner on the button to limit access when appropriate, while giving everyone access to the rest of the refrigerator.

Who wants to help me build it? I really need to learn how to use some type of software like Photoshop. These ideas would look so much cooler if I had a snappy image to go along with ‘em.

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

You can find more information on Lexi-Drugs here.

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.

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.

According to the document “the role of the pharmacy technician is evolving and varies according to state and setting. This role description draws on the one developed by the Pharmacy Technician Educators Council (PTEC)”, and the standards have been developed to:

• protect the public,
• serve as a guide for pharmacy technician education and training program development,
• provide criteria for the evaluation of new and established programs, and
• promote continuous improvement of established programs.

You can see the actual document here.

Kind of cool, except for the fact that the comment period is open until September followed by another round of comments. At this rate we should have a nice set of standards by the end of… uh…hmm, 2013? Woohoo! Light speed ahead.