Ideas « Jerry Fahrni

Tag Archives: Ideas

Saturday morning coffee [February 23 2013]

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

So much happens each and every week that 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….

The coffee mug from the right is straight out of the Twin Cities area, i.e. the Minneapolis-Saint Paul in Minnesota. I picked it up at a Caribou Coffee shop in Minneapolis. Apparently Caribou Coffee is a locally owned business in the Twin Cities area. I have no idea really, but that’s what I was told and the website does list a local address (3900 Lakebreeze Ave N., Minneapolis, MN 55429). The coffee is pretty good I thought the mug looked cool. It was the first time I had ever been to the Minneapolis area. I don’t recommend it as a tourist spot in the winter. It was cold boys and girls. The first night I was there it was a cool 0 (zero) degrees F. One neat thing about the trip was that I got a chance to go to the Mall of America. Impressive place.
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Automating the oral pediatric syringe filling process [idea]

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Jerry Fahrni

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The distribution process in pediatric acute care can be quite a bit different than its adult counterpart. The basics are the same on the surface: 1) receive medication orders, 2) fill medication orders, 3) dispense medications. The big difference however is how those medication orders are filled. Pediatric patients require a lot medications in liquid form pulled into oral syringes with patient specific dosages. The bummer is that a vast majority of these syringes are not manufactured in unit of use syringes. In other words you have to do most of the work yourself. It’s a bit of a hassle, but it has to be done. The process of pulling liquid doses into oral syringes has more in common with work done in the IV room than it does with traditional oral solid distribution.

Recently I was visited a pediatric hospital and watched this process in action. Based on what I witnessed I started to wonder if it was possible to automate the process. And if you could automate it, would it offer any benefit? I suppose it could increase the safety of the process as well as potentially eliminate the need for a pharmacist, freeing them to do something else. Maybe. Maybe not. Regardless, it was worth more thought.

I started breaking down the process and realizes that it’s more complex than it appears on the surface; it always is. Automating the process would be difficult. Several pieces of the puzzle are already available today, but as completely disparate systems.

Just thinking out loud, or in writing as the case may be, the process would look a little like this:
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Tic Tac dispenser as alternative prescription bottle [video]

Posted on August 27, 2012 by Jerry Fahrni

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All the companies that have spent millions developing a “better way” to dispense medications (tablets) should watch the video below. The company that makes Tic Tacs has you all beat. And just a guess here, but I bet that little plastic Tic Tac dispenser doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Someone needs to develop a prescription bottle that works like this. Walgreens has been doing a lot of consumer prescription stuff lately. Perhaps they would be interested in investing a little time, energy and effort. Never know.

File this one under idea: #10987.

Clearinghouse for pharmacy automation and technology ideas

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Jerry Fahrni

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My post from last week along with a conversation I had with my brother got me thinking about all the good pharmacy ideas that never see the light of day. I know there are some great ideas out there because I’ve been fortunate enough to see many of them in my travels. My job gives me the opportunity to visit a lot of hospital pharmacies and speak to a lot of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Trust me when I say there are a lot of smart people out there that could improve the practice of pharmacy with their ideas.

So why is it that so many good ideas don’t get the attention they deserve? There are lots of reasons.
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Pharmacy needs a new method for sharing non-clinical information

Posted on May 20, 2012 by Jerry Fahrni

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Last week I found myself in Florida for work. I had a little extra time on my hands so I stopped by NOVA Southeastern University to visit with a friend and colleague, Kevin Clausen (@kevinclausen). Kevin is not only a pharmacist, but professor and researcher at the Center for Consumer Health Informatics Research at NOVA Southeastern. He’s one of a select few pharmacists that are dedicated to pharmacy informatics in academia.

Kevin and I talked about a lot of topics, but one topic that was of particular interest was getting information published in journals. As an active researcher Kevin has a laundry list of published articles to his credit, giving him keen knowledge of the process for publishing research in peer-reviewed journals. One thing that struck a chord with me was the effort and time required to get an article published. Apparently it can take multiple article revisions and upwards of a year to get an article accepted by a certain journals.

No one that’s been involved in the process would be shocked by this; not even me. I’ve heard this before from other people in my profession. The problem is that the model doesn’t work for informatics, automation and technology (IAT). The speed at which the field is evolving means that information is often obsolete by the time it hits the peer-reviewed journals.

The basic question is whether or not information about pharmacy IAT requires the same rigors as research aimed at the clinical side of pharmacy. Does a study of turnaround time during pharmacy distribution with carousel technology vs. robotics require the same intense scrutiny that a study looking at the use of an ACEI vs. an ARB in PWD and HTN would? Not likely. While one could argue that the method of distribution may impact patient care it is unlikely that the impact would be worth little more than a friendly debatable among colleagues.
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Thinking about pharmacy refrigerators

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Jerry Fahrni

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I love the Yanko Design website. It has so many cool concepts. Recently while browsing the site I cam across the Grabit, “a door handle fitted with a fingerprint scanner” (image to the right). I immediately thought of pharmacy. It would be cool to see one of these attached to all the refrigerators in the pharmacy. Anytime you wanted to get something out of the fridge you’d simply place your thumb on the fingerprint scanner as you grabbed the handle to open the door. The Grabit handle would register your fingerprint and identify you as someone that had access. And if not, you wouldn’t be able to get in. This would work well for high dollar items that you wanted to track or controlled substances that require refrigeration.
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Witnessless waste, a novel concept

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Jerry Fahrni

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While at the Pediatric Safety Summit in Bellevue, WA this week I had the opportunity to speak with several pharmacists about things ranging from the state of pharmacy practice to how best to use technology to improve patient care and so on. There really is no better way to spur idea generation than to sit down with a colleague and talk face to face.

Real-time infusate verification with smartpumps. How do we get there?

Posted on September 7, 2010 by Jerry Fahrni

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Smartpumps are anything but smart. They provide an extra layer of safety to intravenously administered medications to be sure, but they can only do what we tell them. We build the “drug dictionaries” against which all infusions are measured and we ask those administering the medications to abide by the rules associated with programming and using the pumps. Unfortunately that leaves a lot of room for human error and outright flagrant disregard for processes and procedures. I digress, that’s a different post altogether.

Assuming that the provider responsible for setting up the pump follows the rules, and that the medication is correctly prepared by the pharmacy, then we may assume that the smartpump certainly has the potential to prevent errors that may have otherwise been missed. There are plenty of anecdotal reports out there from hospitals where smartpumps have prevented some pretty significant dosage errors associated with opioids and insulin. Not all these errors would have resulted in patient harm, but it’s eye-opening nonetheless.
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