Siemens

Update: Siemens Innovations 2010 parting thoughts

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Innovations 2010 is in the books and I’m back home after a four day stent in Orlando. It’s not uncommon for me to get a little overwhelmed at a conference because there’s simply too much information to digest at one time. Sometimes it takes me a few days to mull over the information and decide what I’m going to do with it. After all, I can’t use everything I learned because some of it simply doesn’t apply to my situation. In addition I spent more time talking with people one-on-one this year than in years past. I feel like I get more out of people when I can direct the conversation where I want it to go.

Well, it turns out that long plane rides and airport delays are a good time to get your thoughts together, toss around some ideas and make some decisions. While I have a long list of Siemens specific items to look over when I get back to work tomorrow, I won’t bore you with those here. Instead I thought I would share some general thoughts about my Innovations 2010 experience.

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Update: Siemens Innovations 2010 final day

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Today is my final Day at Innovations and I’ve managed to pick up quite a bit of good, useful information that has the potential to improve our operations back at the hospital. I’ve been in my current position as an IT pharmacist for about 2 1/2 years now and this is my third Innovations conference. I finally have enough experience under my belt to start putting the pieces together in a manner that allows me to gather information in a more strategic fashion, rather than just running around trying to gather enough information to put out fires.

This years Innovations conference was heavy with sessions on ARRA, meaningful use and CPOE. I’m not surprised as this is where all the money will be for vendors involved in HIT over the next several years.

Anyway, I feel there are a couple of presentations I attended yesterday that are worth mentioning.

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Update: Siemens Innovations 2010 – Day 1

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Today was the first real working day at Innovations. Yesterday was taken up by all the registration stuff that you have to do when you arrive at a conference, and the welcome reception. Most of the morning was fairly benign as a good chunk of it was taken up by the opening session. I’m not a big fan of opening sessions as they tend to all sound the same. However, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of good sessions in addition to spending some time at the expo. I general love roaming the expo, but this year’s vendor selection is quite small and not really that interesting. It only took me about an hour to run through all the booths and collect a little reading material for later.

One unplanned event that I have to mention was the pleasure of eating breakfast next to Johnathan Paul, a senior engineer in enterprise R & D at Siemens. He casually sat down next to me this morning and asked me what sessions I was planning on attending. I promptly gave him my spiel about attending the various pharmacy sessions, but in addition I lamented the fact that I was going to miss the presentation on “Virtualization, Cloud Computing, SOA, Elasticity, De-Duplication…What Do These Technical Terms Really Mean and How Do We Apply Them?” because it was at the same time as the pharmacy update. I didn’t know at the time, but he was the presenter for that session. After I got past my initial embarrassment we had a great conversation about many of the topics he planned to cover. I came away with some great information and knowledge that Siemens is doing things behind the scenes that makes me downright giddy.

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Siemens Innovations ’10 here I come

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I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my flight. I’m on my way to Orlando for Innovations ’10 for Healthcare IT. Innovations is an annual conference put on by Siemens, who promote themselves as “ a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, and operates in the industry, energy and healthcare sectors.” The hospital where I work uses several products from Siemens including Siemens Pharmacy, Siemens Medication Administration Check (MKA) and Soarian, which is their clinical information system for physicians and nurses, and the foundation for their CPOE system.

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Why my Firefox browser is more advanced than our hospital’s HIS

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frustration.cartoonEach day I roll into work ready for another exciting day of pharmacy technology. I’m usually bright-eyed and ready for a new challenge because I’ve spent the previous night scouring the web and reading about all the incredible technology being put into place all over the world; tablet pcs, electronic paper and ink, advanced nanoparticles, automated dispensing devices, mobile phones, advances in social networking, and so on ad infinitum. Then there are days like today when I have something land in my lap that just makes me shake my head and wonder if healthcare will ever catch up to the rest of the world.

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Pediatric labels for bar code medication administration (BCMA)

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One of the questions marks surrounding BCMA, known as MAK in Siemens language, is how to label pediatric oral syringes. Unlike most adult unit-dosed medications, pediatric dosages come in a variety of sizes. Where an adult patient may receive 25mg of captopril, a pediatric patient may receive a range of doses based on weight (0.15-0.3 mg/kg/dose for infants). The captopril tablet used by adults is barcode ready from the manufacturer. The pediatric dose, on the other hand, is not. For pediatric patients we compound a 0.75mg/mL oral suspension and pull the doses into oral syringes based on the provider’s order. Captopril is only one example as we do the same for hydralazine, spironolactone, propranolol, sildenafil, etc.

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Siemens Innovations ’09 – The End

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Siemens Innovations has officially come to an end. My time in Philadelphia was good, but I will be happy to get home to the “dry heat”. The information I picked up was very valuable and I made some great contacts. I’m excited to get back to work and see what damage I can cause with my newly acquired knowledge.

As I wrap up my time here at Innovations ’09 a few thoughts come to mind:

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Siemens Innovations ’09 – update, part deux

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I spent the day attending the following educational sessions: Where did My Mumps Job Scheduler (MJS) Go? – This was a pretty basic “how-to” session covering the new job scheduler, Cache, used in the latest version of the pharmacy system. Boring, but helpful. Integrating Siemens Pharmacy to Maximize the Pharmacist Role – This was the … Read more

Siemens Innovations ’09 – update

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I just finished my last session of the day here in Philadelphia, and overall I would have to say it was a productive one.

My first session today was an update on various future enhancements to both the Siemens Pharmacy System and their barcode medication administration system (BCMA), fondly referred to as MAK. The future enhancements bring much needed functionality to a system that, in my opinion, wasn’t ready for prime time.

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Siemens Innovations ’09 – Opening Session

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This mornings opening session for Siemens Innovations ’09 was delivered by Janet Dillione, CEO of Health Services Siemens Healthcare. Not surprisingly, the opening speech was focused on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and healthcare reform. Healthcare information technology took center stage from about an hour. Some items of interest to me were: Based … Read more