Saturday morning coffee [May 18 2013]

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 below was a gift that I received from the unSUMMIT U for giving a barcoding webinar back in January. For those of you that don’t know, the unSUMMIT is all about barcoding, of which I have a fair amount of experience/expertise.  The unSUMMIT U is an extension of the unSUMMIT that offers webinars about barcoding throughout the year. I’ve attended a couple.

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Medication therapy management at TEDxUniversity [video]

Thanks to Megan Hartranft (@MeganPharmD) and John Poikonen (@poikonen) for tweeting this. It’s nothing earth shattering, but it sums up why pharmacists should be more involved. Tim Ulbrich does a really nice job. Pharmacy schools should show this short video to all their pharmacy students before turning them loose on the world. I talked about … Read more

Saturday morning coffee [May 11 2013]

MUG_Talyst3So 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 to the right is from the company I work for. Strange little story to go along with how I ended up working there, but that’s probably better saved for another time. I ended up with a mug from the company long before I came on board. It was part of a swag bag at one of the past user group meetings that I attended as a customer. I believe it was my first ASHP Summer meeting way back in June of 2009; can’t be sure though.

Iron Man 3 was #1 at the box office last weekend raking in a cool $174 million. No surprise there as Iron Man 3 was expected to be a blockbuster. I wasn’t able to see it over the weekend, but did manage to catch it Monday night. Was it good? Absolutely, it was a very good move. However, I was a bit disappointed. There was a lot going on in the movie, and some of it felt “off”. I’d still see it again. It’s a bummer that this is likely the end of the Iron Man franchise. Oh, just in case you were wondering Pain and Gain was a close second with $7.5 million in weekend gross; a mere 23 fold difference.

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Info packets instead of a pharmacist used in attempt to improve medication adherence

I came across an article today in The Baltimore Sun that caught my attention. According to the article: “In a test of services geared toward making sure patients took their prescribed medications after leaving the emergency room, none made a difference, a large new study suggests. Based on the experiment involving nearly 4,000 ER patients, researchers … Read more

Smartphone medication adherence apps [Article]

Not sure how I missed this one, but there’s an article in the March-April 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Pharmacist Association that covers smartphone applications for medication adherence. Smartphone medication adherence apps: Potential benefits to patients and providers (J Am Pharm Assoc. 2013;53:172-181) From the abstract: “160 adherence apps were identified and … Read more

Evolution of [Pharmacy] Practice in an Age of Information [Presentation]

Yesterday I was at Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Orange, CA. for the HIMSS Southern California Chapter 5th Annual Clinical Informatics Summit: Adventures in Clinical Informatics. I was there to give a presentation about pharmacy. It’s the first public presentation I’ve given since retiring from the presentation game just over two years ago. Now that it’s … Read more

Gamification for medication compliance: Mango Health

GigaOM: “Mango Health, founded by former executives from mobile gaming company ngmoco, is using game mechanics to get people to be more conscientious about managing their health. Mango Health… believes that by combining game mechanics with an intuitive, fun design and useful features, they can keep patients on track. Since August, the company has been … Read more

MedFolio, more medication compliance technology

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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Saturday morning coffee [February 23 2013]

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….

MUG_MinneapolisThe 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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