The video below is of me playing on the Surface wall. Based on my experience I’ve decided that I need one of these in my house. I have just the spot for it. Now if I could only convince my wife of the same thing.

- In the “people are strange” category, Michael Jackson This Is It was #1 at the box office last weekend. My wife and I took in Couples Retreat home today. It was worth the price of admission and it made me laugh. Who could ask for more then that?

- Dave Troy:  “Why Twitter “Lists” Change Everything – Going forward, the primary question will be which specific lists you appear on (influence of curator, quality, scarcity) and, secondarily, how many lists you appear on (reach, influence). Do you think that an author would pay to get onto twitter.com/oprah/incredible-writers? Yeah, I do too. Now imagine that, writ large, and scummier, with people even less reputable than Oprah. Now you see what I’m talking about.” - Wow, what a scary thought.

- BMJ Group blogs:  “The beginning of the end for impact factors and journals. Slowly but surely these metrics [“article level metrics”]  will become much superior to using the impact factor of the journal in which an article is published as a surrogate for the impact of the article itself. Although a routine practice, this is wholly unscientific because there is very little correlation between the impact of a journal and the impact of the articles it publishes—because the impact factor of the journal is driven by a few articles that are very highly cited.” – This is a very interesting article that makes a lot of sense. I highly recommend you read the entire thing when you have a moment.

- HealthDay:  “Let Kids Sleep Late on Weekends to Fight Fat: Study – Researchers in Hong Kong found that children who got less sleep tended to be heavier (as measured by body mass index, or BMI) than children who slept more. But among children who slept less than eight hours a night, those who compensated for their weekday sleep deficit by sleeping late on weekends or holidays were significantly less likely to be overweight or obese.” – Well, that coveres sleeping in on the weekends. Now if they could only prove that watching Scooby-Doo on Saturday morning could decrease your BMI.

- Boy Genius Report: “It’s amazing how a simple double-tap gesture will dramatically change the usability of a touch-screen-based browser. Literally, it’s one thing (besides CPU speed, a great screen obviously, etc.) that makes a big difference. Again, there’s no multi-touch and to be honest, a simple pinch-zoom gesture is really missed.” – Yep, that about sums it up for me. I spent about an hour playing with the DROID in a local Verizon store today and the lack of multi-touch makes the browser experience less than stellar. Too bad really, because it has some great feature. On the other hand, the HTC DROID ERIS by HTC was sitting right next to it and turned out to be a great device. Too bad the screen is only 3.2”.

- Macro Linz: “The web started out as knowledge gathering tools for building archives. Websites, wikis, link repositories like Del.icio.us, an untold number of file archives, search, RSS and all the tools that bring it to you like GoogleReader… All that is the heart of the web. There is little personal connection in knowledge gathering tools though some of them have “social” aspects. They are not about community, but about sharing and collating information.” – This article is well written and brings up some interesting points about the web and social media tools. As I’ve said before, use it however you want, it’s just a tool.

- RxInformatics.com: “A coalition of 9 hospitals implemented best practices for medication administration reporting an astonishing 88% [link] reduction in medication errors. These best practices did not include bar code medication administration (see listing below). CalNOC (the California Nursing Outcomes Coalition) “best practices” for medication administration: 1. Compare medication to medical record 2. Keep medication labeled until administration < 3. Check two forms of patient identification 4. Immediately record medication administration in chart 5. Explain the medication to the patient 6. Minimize distractions and disruptions during the administration process.“ – This post was written by John Poikonen. I’ve mentioned John before because he has an interesting view on bar code medication administration (BCMA). While John and I don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on the use of BCMA, he makes a great point with his post on low-tech error prevention. None of the methods listed to decrease errors is new, but they are often overlooked. It’s important to remember that technology cannot replace the human factor. Diligence plus technology is a winner though.

- And not to be outdone, Barbara Olson (@SafetyNurse) posted this nice response at Florence dot com: “What the San Francisco nurses really studied is whether adherence to a system designed to elicit a specific outcome yields the desired outcome more often than using a loosely defined, variably employed set of expectations does. Minimizing distractions was an important part of the interventions, but it wasn’t the only one. Understanding that the nurses did not find one “magic bullet,” but rather moved from an “intention-based” process to a process that was both engineered and adhered to helps to explain the very favorable, highly desirable results obtained.” – Good read.

- David Bradley (@sciencebase) has a great post at the sciencetext website that talks about how to decide which Twitter accounts to follow. “Twitter is the place to be online and tips abound. But, how do you decide whether to follow someone who has followed you? There are some basic filters you can use, like not following back obvious spammers and scammers and generally not following people with protected tweets unless you know them already.” He’s gone as far as to create a great “Twitter Decision Flowchart”. The flowchart is a funny because it’s true.

Barcoding Blog: “Microsoft recently announced that they intend to become a key player in RFID technology. More specifically, they plan to provide RFID-enabled software for mid-size companies to better manage their supply chains. For more information on Microsoft and RFID, download their whitepaper Microsoft & RFID.” – I’m a big fan of RFID technology and think it has a place in healthcare. Unfortunately I’m about the only one that thinks that.

- Healthcare IT News: ” The five recommendations [to improving medication adherence] are: Quality Improvement, Care Coordination, Health IT, Patient/Provider Education and Engagement, Health Services Research. The recommendations were developed following a July conference attended by more than 40 medication adherence experts, including providers, patients, payers and academics.” – I have to laugh when I read something like this. It took 40 “experts” to come up with a list that half the high-schoolers in America could have developed in half the time for a lot less money. This falls in the “no kidding?” category.

- Laika’s MedLibLog’s Twitter Lists of Medical and other Scientific Journals. The same website has this cool video called “Flu Attach! How A Virus Invades Your Body”.

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- I sent out a Tweet yesterday asking all pharmacists, MDs and nurses what mobile devices there were using. I received a whopping four responses and they were all for the iPhone. I guess people who don’t use the iPhone don’t tweet.

- Gizmodo has a few more details about the Microsoft Courier. I really hope this device comes to market. If the details regarding the Courier are accurate it could fill a real need in certain niche markets. I’d buy one.

- Another device I’d like to lay my little hands on is the enTourage eDGe. The eDGe offers a dual screen clamshell design with an e-reader on one side and a netbook on the other. The company is taking pre-orders now for February 2010 deliver.

- Thank goodness that the baseball season is finally over. The Yankees won the World Series for anyone that really cares. For the record, the Yankees payroll was $208,097,414 while the Phillies was 111,209,046. Who says you can’t buy a championship.

- My Arizona Cardinals take on the Chicago Bears this Sunday. It’s too bad they have to play each others because I really like the Bears, but not enough to pick ‘em over my Cardinals. Go Cards!

Have a great weekend everyone.

As I said in a previous post: “Touchscreens are becoming more and more popular, especially with the increased use of smartphones, UMPCs, and MIDs. Touchscreen navigation on these smaller devices is a must if you hope to make them useful to the user. While a touchscreen isn’t a necessity on larger device yet, it is a welcome luxury. Like most great technological advances, it will take quite some time for touchscreens to filter down into pharmacy, but I think it’ll eventually get here. After all you don’t have to use the touchscreen for navigation, but it sure would be a nice option to have. Imagine entering an order on a CPOE system with nothing more than the tip of your finger. If properly designed, the physician wouldn’t have to type anything. Simply tap a pre-built link with the drug, dose, route and frequency desired and hit “send’. “

According to the Norrköping website “The technique used in this table is already utilized successfully as a compliment to the conventional autopsy. Apart from avoiding cutting in the body the doctors can see things that are difficult to discover in a conventional autopsy. Furthermore, the technique opens up for new opportunities in countries where autopsies are not accepted due to cultural reasons. The technique can also revolutionize the traditional health care in many areas.”

I sure wish we would have had one of these when I was a pharmacy student at UCSF. For some unknown reason, pharmacy students were forced to take a gross anatomy class. We spent a lot of long nights and weekends cutting up some poor corpse, and all that could have been avoided with a Virtual Autopsy Table. Using this sort of technology might not be ideal for a surgery resident, but it would work just fine for a pharmacy student. Imagine the utility if this technology could be combined with Zebra Imaging’s holograms.