Pharmacy Informatics and Technology
Installing and using Citrix Receiver on your iPhone/iPod Touch
While at ASHP Midyear a colleague and friend of mine, @pillguy, was able to pull up the pharmacy system at his hospital using Citrix on his iPhone. At that moment I was attacked by a green monster and nearly consumed with envy. I can not yet match this feat of superiority with my Droid, but I’m hopeful.
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Below is a list of drug information resources for both mobile devices and online access. I’ve used most, but not all, of these resources and have found the mobile versions to be a valuable resource when you’re on the go. While it is possible to access the online versions of these resources via a smartphone, the mobile applications are designed with the smaller screen in mind and therefore, in my opinion, work better then the online versions when using a mobile device.
Let me know if I missed any. Also feel free to comment on your favorite.
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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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medgadget: “eMedia Interactive Ltd. out of Galway, Ireland has released an iPhone app to help learn the anatomy of the heart. Using the Pocket Heart app, one can browse the organ in three dimensions using zoom and rotate features, identify individual components, and take quizzes to test one’s knowledge. This simulator might also be helpful to medical students, residents and clinicians learning to perform echocardiography, by allowing to correlate echo images to the anatomy. So grab the Pocket Heart and head to our own EchoJournal to learn more about cardiac echoes.” – Pocket Heart is a nifty little application. Go check out the website and run through the demo.
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.
Read more …
Epocrates is a suit of mobile medical reference material, with their drug information application being the most popular. The applications are available for a variety of mobile devices including Palm, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and of course the iPhone. Despite the popularity of Epocrates I still think Lexi-Comp offers better products for mobile devices.
FierceMobileHealthcare: “Epocrates: Nurses prefer Palm but physicians love the iPhoneA recently released survey from mobile healthcare software developer Epocrates indicates that nurses still prefer Palm PDAs and smartphones for viewing Epocrates reference tools, though the iPhone/iPod touch and BlackBerry platforms are gaining. But in an interview with FierceMobileHealthcare last week, Michelle Snyder, Epocrates’ senior VP for subscriber business, said that the iPhone is far and away the most popular device among physicians.” – The article goes on to say that Epocrates is gaining “more than 300 new docs a day on the iPhone“.No surprise there.
Medical Smartphones: “Epocrates has announced that they will be phasing out support for older Palm OS and Windows Mobile/Pocket PC devices. Specifically, older devices, including those with Palm OS less than 5 and Pocket PC 2002 OS, will lose support. If you have a Pocket PC, go into Settings, and then click on “About” to see what version you’re running. Some older devices (like some of the HP iPaq models) run Pocket PC 2002.” – This is interesting, but pretty much irrelevant. I think most healthcare professionals using mobile technology as a reference device won’t even notice the loss of support for these older devices.
The iPhone and iPod Touch have created quite a wave in healthcare, and along with the wave has come a plethora of healthcare applications. The user interface on the iPhone/iPod Touch combined with the ease of accessing applications on Apple’s iTunes store and the relatively inexpensive nature of most applications, have made these devices a favorite among healthcare professionals.
With the volume of healthcare related applications available, I’m surprised at how few I actually use. I spend quite a bit of time surfing the app store looking for new applications that I can apply to pharmacy. I’ve downloaded numerous applications, but have deleted most for one reason or another.
My “research” has led to the list below of applications that I find most useful as a pharmacist.
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.
Read more …
InformationWeek: “Software developers believe developing applications to run on private clouds will become one of their main tasks over the coming year. Out of 500 surveyed, 48.9% said they expect to be doing cloud applications within the year. The Cloud Development survey is the first by Evans Data, an independent research firm that conducts periodic surveys of developers. A total of 29.7% said they are current working on applications for private cloud environments. Another 19.2% said they expect to be engaged in cloud development within the next 12 months. The largest group of respondents, 48%, said they think that Java is the best language for developing in the cloud; Microsoft’s C# was the number two pick. Evans Data surveys have tended to slant somewhat toward Java developers, since participants self-select or sign up to participate in numbers that are not precisely reflective of what languages are in use throughout the world of programming.” - This survey is of particular interest because software developers tend to heard the reset of us toward the future of computing. How do you think the iPhone became so popular; developers embraced the technology and began writing applications that can do everything from updating your Twitter page to helping physicians with their EMRs. It’s inline with Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams, “if you build it, they will come”. However, I find it strange that Java is the language of choice with Microsoft C# (c-sharp) coming in second. I’ve had a lot of issues with Java applications in the past secondary to version control. I think I’ll stick with the limited C# knowledge that I have and expand on it. My brother has been trying to get me to learn C# for years. It’s on my to-do list, just below win-the-lottery.
