“After three months of rumors, details surrounding Epic Systems’ partnership with Apple for a mobile phone-based electronic health record (EHR) application have come to light: Just a few days ago, Epic System’s iPhone application, called Haiku, became available on Apple’s AppStore. Haiku provides authorized clinical users of Epic’s Electronic Health Record with secure access to clinic schedules, hospital patient lists, health summaries, test results and notes. Haiku also supports dictation and In Basket access. Haiku works on both the iPhone and iPod touch,” according to the app’s description on the AppStore.”
This is a very interesting turn of events as rumors regarding Apples new tablet entering the healthcare arena have been swirling around the internet. Could Haiku be the precursor to what we’ll see with the Apple tablet? I sure hope so.
Source
Medication reconciliation is defined by JCAHO as “the process of comparing a patient’s medication orders to all of the medications that the patient has been taking. This reconciliation is done to avoid medication errors such as omissions, duplications, dosing errors, or drug interactions.” The process should be fairly straight forward, but it is actually very difficult and time consuming.
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As usual there were a lot of things that happened during the week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I found interesting.
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As usual there were a lot of things that happened during the week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I found interesting.
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While not specifically related to pharmacy, this is very interesting. Stephen S. Hau, the founder of PatientKeeper in the 90’s, has created a new product called Shareable Ink. The product uses a digital pen on paper forms to capture handwriting. The information is transferred, via wireless connection, to a server where the information is digitized. The technology is not new per se, but the application to medicine in this way is.
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My post from yesterday about allergies spurred some great comments on Twitter from @omowizard and @psweetman. I read the discussion between @omowizard and @psweetman with great interest and wish I would have been awake to participate. Unfortunately I was already counting sheep when the conversation took place. The discussion also made me realize how difficult it is to carry on a serious conversation with the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter. What we need is a place where a conversation can extend beyond the 140 character limit. Oh, wait, we have that; friendfeed. I digress.
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As usual there were a lot of things that happened during the week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I found interesting.
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I found an interesting article at EHR Bloggers that talks about the possibility of easy access to information via the internet resulting in difficult-to-treat patients and higher healthcare costs.
The concern raised in the NPR article describes the effect of information dissemination without context or interpretation – it happens anyway, with direct-to-consumer advertising in all forms of media, and it happens even faster with the Internet. And when patients, armed with these “facts” and the questions they raise, come to their physicians – the physician is often hard-pressed to put things into perspective. The result? Often, very-low-yield tests (or even unnecessary tests that raise the risk of harm through adverse events) and unnecessarily expensive treatments are agreed-to, simply because it’s the path of least resistance.
The problem isn’t with informed patients; it’s the model we’ve developed in our current healthcare system. The article speaks about limited time for physicians secondary to fee-for-service care. This is similar to what retail pharmacies have done with much of outpatient pharmacy services. Most retail pharmacists will tell you they spend more time fighting with insurance companies then they do talking with patients about their medications. One of the most enjoyable times of my pharmacy career was a short stint I spent working for a small independent pharmacy in San Jose. The owner/pharmacist that I worked with had a genuine interest in his patients, knew them by name and offered sound therapeutic advice. His patients appreciated his time and knowledge and were better informed to make important decision because of it.
The article goes on to offer some thought provoking ideas for closing the gap between our current healthcare model and well informed patients. It’s interesting stuff. If you have a moment I recommend you read the entire thing.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has created quite a flutter of activity in healthcare during the past several months. I can’t remember a time when something was such a popular topic. Everywhere you look, Twitter, Facebook, personal blogs, professional blogs, and so on are talking about how to demonstrate “meaningful use” and get their hot little hands on some cash.
While the idea is sound, the implementation has something to be desired. The overwhelming attention to the definition of “meaningful use” and the looming 2011 timeline has created some unwanted side effects to the ARRA. Hospitals have started throwing project plans in reverse for significant revision or throwing them out the window and starting over all together. Projects that may have been in the pipeline for months, or years, are now taking a back seat to the ARRA requirements. Project development and timelines are involved processes that are designed to work around several variables such as capital budgets, current software and hardware specs, and available human resources.
Many healthcare systems have yet to develop a plan to implement many of the requirements necessary to meet the ARRA “meaningful use” criteria. If a healthcare systems wasn’t ready to begin the process at any time over the past several years what makes the US government think they’ll be ready just because they say so? Is the infrastructure in place? Do they have the resources to not only implement, but support the new systems as well? These are all questions that people should be asking. I for one am disappointed in our facility as we have decided to immediately move forward with projects that weren’t slated for another 18-24 months. To make this happen other projects have been placed lower in the priority queue, creating a lack of resources that risk jeopardizing the quality of both implementations.
Healthcare systems should not be directed down a path that they feel unprepared to face. Doing so will only invite failure.
EMR Daily News: “Hypatia Research, LLC today released a report entitled “What Healthcare CIOs Need to Know About ARRA & EHR: Healthcare Technology Solutions & Service Providers”. Beyond the obvious value of centralized access to patient data, Hypatia Research discerned that electronic records systems provide health providers with multiple benefits: 1. ACCURACY& ERROR-CHECKS; 2. REPORTING; 3. MEDICAL NOWLEDGE-BASE; 4. NEAR-TIME ACTIONABLE INSIGHT” - If your CIO needs a research firm to understand what an electronic records system should provide, then you’re healthcare system is in deep doo-doo. This is all basic stuff that should have been on the radar long ago.
