Wolters Kluwer acquires Pharmacy OneSource

You may not be familiar with Wolters Kluwer, but if you’re a pharmacist I’m sure you are familiar with their products: Facts & Comparisons, Medi-Span, Ovid, ProVation Medical, UpToDate. While Facts & Comparisons has become an afterthought in the drug information world, products like UpToDate and ProVation Medical are gaining traction in the healthcare industry. … Read more

MedKeeper acquires DoseResponse

It looks like MedKeeper is making a play in the therapeutic monitoring market by acquiring DoseResponse, a web-based outpatient anticoagulation management system from Keystone Therapeutics. The press release can be found here.

Outpatient anticoagulation therapy, i.e. warfarin management, became a big deal when JCAHO made it one of their national patient safety goals a few years back. I’m specifically referring to National Patient Safety Goal 3E: Reducing Harm from Anticoagulation Therapy. If you feel like giving yourself a headache you can read through the entire Abulatory Health Care National Patient Safety Goals (PDF). I wouldn’t recommend it.

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Speaking of healthcare data, is Microsoft the elephant in the room?

In a previous blog I discussed the need for a uniformed data structure in healthcare. The concept got me thinking about how to accomplish such a monumental task, and make no mistake, it would be a monumental task. There aren’t many “people” out there that could develop the hardware and software infrastructure solid enough to handle the needs of the complex data stream coming out of the healthcare industry.

Then I noticed a trend at a lot of the web sites that I frequent: Microsoft has slowly, and quietly, been positioning itself to jump into the healthcare market.

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Time for a new model of data storage and software distribution in pharmacy

There was a time when I thought all a pharmacist needed to do his job was a pen and a calculator. It was just so cumbersome to carry anything else. If you wanted to have mobile drug information it meant carrying a drug reference book with you everywhere. Who can forget being in pharmacy school where every self respecting pharmacy student had a Drug Information Handbook stuffed in their lab coat pocket along with all the other stuff they carried like a homemade peripheral brain scribbled on the pages of a notebook or on those neat little 3×5 cards.

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SaaS and speech recognition for EHRs

CMIO: “In the past, major barriers to EHR adoption included high upfront costs and lack of IT resources to implement and maintain the technology,” the report stated. “A SaaS model solves both of these issues and Ovum believes it is the best approach for physician offices and small hospitals. With a predictable, monthly expense, a … Read more

SaaS and pharmacy

Software as a service (SaaS) has recently been popping up in healthcare related news, from Fujitsu’s SaaS solution for drug trials to the host of web-based applications from Pharmacy OnceSource. SaaS is different than the traditional enterprise software model because the provider of the software licenses it to the customer as an on-demand service. The … Read more

US Army utilizing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to standardize methodology

InformationWeek: “The pilot program has already shown the way toward more consistency in environmental reporting and given the Army baseline data for forecasting, but Davis is looking for more, especially in the way of greenhouse gasses. “As we begin to understand and appreciate the benefits of this information technology, we can calculate our greenhouse gas … Read more

A rose by any other name….

HealthBlog: “Monday evening, I was invited to attend a dinner with my fellow panelists (Dr. David Kibbe, Ravi Sharma, Steve Adams, Martin Pellinat) and others to discuss the idea of clinical groupware.  If you are not familiar with that term, clinical groupware is described as a set of practice management, electronic medical record, decision support, … Read more