I had an opportunity to spend some time at MedKeeper headquarters in Westminster, CO last week. I’ve worked with MedKeeper before, but this was the first time I had the opportunity to visit the facility and meet their team.
MedKeeper is a company that makes several products for acute care pharmacy, specifically they develop software targeted at pharmacy operations. Some of you may know them for their medication tracking system, MedBoard.
Read more …
MedKeeper: “Based on similar use cases, the comparison between bar code and RFID technologies is inevitable. Several papers have reviewed the use of these technologies in hopes of defining best practice. Young concluded that a coordinated use of these technologies might provide the best compromise between implementation costs and potential benefits. RFID technology, with its high cost, may be most appropriate for patient identification, while the lower cost of bar code systems may be more appropriate for material inventory.[3]
Sun et al.[4] arrived at a similar conclusion. In this case, the authors evaluated medication error reduction. Due to the high cost of RFID tags and readers the authors proposed a system utilizing less costly bar codes for unit-dose medications while using an RFID-embedded wristband worn by patients for identification.”
Read more …
Business Wire: “Aesynt™ announced it has completed the acquisition of Health Robotics, the leading global supplier of automated technology for intravenous (IV) medication preparation, compounding and dispensing.”
For those of you that have short memories, Aesynt is basically a spin-off of the acute care pharmacy side of McKesson. It’s a big group that specializes in things like automated carousels, inventory management software, packaging and bar-coding technology, controlled substance management hardware and software, and a robotic distribution system, i.e. “the McKesson robot”.
Health Robotics is a company that specializes in IV room automation and technology. They have two robots: i.v.STATION for non-hazardous compounding and i.vSTATION ONCO for hazardous compounding, i.e. chemotherapy. Their robots compete with both Intelligent Hospital Systems – the RIVA robot – and APOTECAchemo. They also have i.v.SOFT, a workflow management system that competes against the likes of DoseEdge by Baxter, among others.
Someone at Aesynt has been paying attention. Interest in IV room technology has been steadily growing for the past few years, basically telegraphing the demand that we’re seeing today. This definitely puts Aesynt in a unique position in the acute care pharmacy space, especially when you consider that they also offer a point of care distribution system and something for anesthesia.
The acquisition of Health Robotics by Aesynt is sure to send some ripples through the world of pharmacy automation and technology. Grab some popcorn and settle back in your chair. As interest in the IV room continues to grow, and as companies begin to fight for market share, things are surely going to get interesting. Exciting stuff.
“Barry Bryant is owner of Barney’s Pharmacy in Augusta, Ga. He and his clinical pharmacy educator, Jake Galdo, discuss some of the ways this new technology can be used in the pharmacy.”
It was bound to happen eventually. Someone in pharmacy finally decided to play with Google Glass. Nothing too specific, apparently just tossing around some ideas, but nice to see. I hope these guys continue to post their experience with glass.
The HIPAA comment cracks me up. The comments about Glass being a HIPAA issue are nonsensical because the same concerns apply to any photo taken with any camera, whether it’s from Glass, a phone, a security camera, and so on. People fretting over the concept of taking a photo of someone is crazy. With that said I’ve come to expect comments like this.
UCSF: “A new initiative by UC San Francisco and Walgreens seeks to turn those numbers around, starting at the neighborhood pharmacy….“Walgreens at UCSF” is a pilot store that offers the most advanced level of community pharmacy care available in the United States today. It starts with the store’s unusual layout: Walk inside and the first thing you see isn’t racks of cosmetics or greeting cards; instead there’s a concierge desk where you can arrange a private consultation with a pharmacist or find out whether your prescription is ready. Pharmacists work with every customer to make sure they understand the medication they’re picking up, while also offering services such as the medication management that brought Helen to UCSF… For UCSF, it will serve as a teaching ground for student pharmacists completing their doctoral degree program, a clinical training site for pharmacy residents, and a research facility that explores new pharmacy patient-care models and programs.”
I found myself at UCSF Medical Center earlier this week and decided to visit the new Walgreens. I had previously read about the setup on Twitter and a couple of articles I found online.
Here are my thoughts and experiences regarding the “Wallgreens at UCSF”.
Read more …
I read a Wall Street Journal article this morning about an online pharmacy called PillPack that’s doing something a little different. “PillPack mails its customers their medications every two weeks, but rather than putting them into several big bottles, the company pre-sorts them into sealed, single-dose packs, based on when a patient needs to take their medications throughout the day. The pills arrive in a long chain of dose packs, linked together on a recyclable dispenser roll.”
It’s not a new concept at all. In fact, the idea has been tossed around in certain pharmacy circles for years. Many companies are capable of providing such a service, but most lack the vision to bring the concept to life. Perhaps PillPack can provide enough value to its customers to make it viable. I really hope it works out for the company. At least they’re thinking outside the box, er, inside the box.
PillPack should really think about partnering with local hospitals and deliver discharge meds to the patient bedside in this handy format. Counsel the patient, make sure they have their meds, automatically enroll them in the mail order service, and so on. Just sayin’.
I’ve noticed an interesting trend recently. Healthcare systems, and more specifically pharmacies, have started to understand the importance of having integrated systems. I realize that the concept of having various systems talk to one another isn’t new, but you’d be surprised at how poorly disparate systems within the pharmacy communicate. Automated packager from company “A”, medication tracking system from company “B”, inventory management from company “C”, and so on. These systems rarely utilize a single master database of information, instead relying on frequent manual updates to multiple databases. The result of such a system is often inaccurate information if you’re lucky, or outright errors if you’re not.
The December 2013 issue Pharmacy Purchasing & Products features a Q&A session with Anne McDonnell, PharmD, BCOP; Caryn Belisle, RPh; and Josephine Leung, PharmD, MBA from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Department of Pharmacy
I had the opportunity to visit Brigham and Women’s Hospital earlier this year while doing some research for a project I’m working on. It’s a very interesting facility that makes use of a lot of pharmacy automation and technology. Based on what you read below you’d think that everything was perfect. What I saw was interesting, but far from perfection.
Worth noting in the Q&A session is that the products being used are never defined, i.e. what technology is being used. There’s mention of a robot, but which robot? They speak of gravimetic analysis, but don’t say what system they’re referring to. I know because I’ve been there, but other people might like to know as well don’t you think?
Here are some of the questions and responses I found particularly interesting in the PP&P article.
Read more …
I’ve been looking through a lot of the California State Board of Pharmacy requirements for sterile compounding logs and accompanying master formula records. The information can be found in the California Lawbook for Pharmacy 2013 [PDF], specifically California Code of Regulation (CCR), Article 4.5 Compounding.
Read more …
You can add another player to already crowded IV workflow management system space.
I heard a rumor that CareFusion had some new technology in their booth at ASHP Midyear this year. Since I’m at ASHP Midyear I decided to wonder over there to take a look, and lo and behold they did indeed have some new stuff. One of the things that caught my eye was their new IV room system.
The system is like many that I’ve seen, complete with camera and barcode scanning for IV medication preparation. I didn’t have much time to evaluate the system, and it’s virtually impossible to do so in the span of a short demo, but overall the Pyxis IV system hits all the major safety checkpoints for this kind of stuff.
CareFusion is playing things pretty smart by moving into the IV room. They’re taking a broad approach to managing the entire inpatient pharmacy, i.e. they now have products that cover medication distribution from back door to the patient, including both IV and non-IV medications. Well played.
So what’s the over-under on how long it will take Omnicell to build or buy an IV room system?
From the CareFusion newsroom:
While the greatest percentage of a hospital pharmacy budget is the cost of IV medication, it is estimated that fewer than 10 percent of hospitals use automation within their IV room where infused medication is compounded. The new Pyxis IV system* helps standardize the workflow in the central pharmacy IV room to securely manage a closed-loop pick, prep and check process, while driving efficiency in pharmacy activities. This standardization also helps improve the accuracy and error rate reduction of the IV compounding process, as well as free up pharmacy staff to redeploy to clinical activities. The new Pyxis IV system consists of monitors in the IV room that walk clinicians through each compounding step. The system organizes all similar orders and recommends the proper vial size to use when compounding to help minimize waste. The system also has video cameras to record compounding components to help facilitate remote checking by a pharmacist, which saves time by eliminating the need for clean room entrance and exit processes
