Jerry Fahrni » Smart phone

Physician mobile choice driving IT development

Jerry Fahrni — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 22:53:05 +0000

amednews.com: “With an estimated 81% of physicians using smartphones (up from 72% in 2010), according to a survey of 2,041 physicians released May 4 by Manhattan Research, Albany Medical Center was not alone in feeling pressure from physicians to allow them mobile access. Hospitals and health information technology vendors are realizing that the way to sell physicians on health information technology is to make it mobile. Instead of hospitals and vendors telling physicians to adapt to their preferred ways of using technology, physicians are gaining the power to sway hospitals and vendors to their preferred way of using it.”

There are a couple of take home messages from this article. First, the increased use of mobile technology is finally forcing healthcare systems to make changes to their approach to technology. It’s something that’s been needed for a long time. Second, the article clearly demonstrates that our healthcare system remains physician centric. It isn’t until physicians cry foul that changes are made. I first asked for “mobile support” in a hospital setting nearly a decade ago, and continued to ask for it until I left the industry about six months ago. Unfortunately I’m a lowly pharmacist. Even at the last facility I worked in, which considered themselves quite technologically advanced, it wasn’t until physicians began demanding iPad support that we got it.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Just sayin’.

Medscape Mobile available for Android

Jerry Fahrni — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 00:10:07 +0000

Opened my spam folder today and found an email announcing the availability of Medscape for Android. While it’s not my favorite drug information resource, it’s decent and it’s free. The application can be downloaded here.

Medscape Mobile is also available for the iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry, just in case you don’t have an Android device.

“What’d I miss?” – Week of August 16th

Jerry Fahrni — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:49:11 +0000

As usual there were a lot of things that happened during the week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I found interesting.

- District 9 was #1 at the box office last weekend. My wife and I plan on going to see it either tonight or Saturday. I’m really looking forward to it. Let’s hope it lives up to the hype.

- As an “IT Pharmacist” I’m always getting interesting requests. This week was no different. Two things stand out. The first was a request to help someone get a new ID badge. The look on my face must have given my feelings away because the individual turned and left with a “never mind”. The second was a request to move a printer from the shelf it was on to the one below. I’m not exactly sure what people think it is that I do, but some serious education is needed.

- There is no shortage of interest for the iPhone on the internet. This week I read two interesting blogs that gave different perspectives on medical applications for the iPhone. On The Wards took a purely inpatient view of applications available for the device, while Brian Ahier gave a little more general approach by including applications for clinical trials and finding your nearest cannabis dealer. The one glaring omission from both was the only application for the iPhone that performs pharmacokinetics calculations, RxCalc.

- EMR Daily News presented the results of the fourth annual Future Physicians of America survey by Epocrates, Inc. The focus was on
technology in medicine with some pretty interesting results. Nearly 90 percent of students think information available through mobile resources in credible, while approximately 60 percent of the students used decision-support software at least twice daily. Smartphones were centrally important to the medical students with 45 percent of those surveyed using an iPhone or iPod Touch. And the best news I’ve heard all day, 90 percent of the students surveyed felt that information from pharmaceutical sales reps was not credible. It appears that there is hope for the medical profession after all. – By the way, this sounds like a good survey to administer to pharmacy students. Who would like to help me design the questionnaire?

- Practice Fusion went crazy this week talking about cloud computing and the safety of your data. Stop by their website, it’s chock full of good information.

- IT World: “This got me thinking. Classic Palm OS is dead, practically speaking, and it has been for a long time. My friend could get an iPod touch, which does most of the same things, does them better (I saw Blazer once, and it chilled my soul), and does a lot more to boot. Plus, in a couple of weeks (at the not-yet-announced-but-not-a-surprise-to-anyone September 9 “music event”) the Touch will get better in modest ways (maybe it’ll add a camera, surely it’ll increase storage). I’m skeptical of the mythical tablet, but if it ever shows up, that might be an option, too. In the face of devices like this, it was obvious that Palm couldn’t hold out forever on TXs and Treos. Hence the Pre (which, like Android, I hope will eventually be awesome). But in the meantime, app lock-in bought Palm time to hire a bunch of Apple people to make the Pre, time that they wouldn’t have had if people like my friend could have fled more easily.” - I loved the Palm OS. I had no less than six Palm devices during their peak popularity. The OS had a simple design and was lightning fast. You might even go as far as to say that the design was the pre-cursor to the iPhone look and feel. I’m feeling a bit nostalgic at the moment. I think I’ll go pull my TRGpro out of my dresser drawer and play with it for a while.

- Medical Smartphones had an interesting post on haptic feedback for mobile devices. I love the little vibration I get from my mobile phone (LG Dare) when I press a key. I would love to see this type of feature added to the iPhone/iPod Touch. One of my biggest problems with my iPod Touch is the sensitivity of the screen and lack of tactile feedback when I’m typing.

- If you ever wanted to know about SNOMED-CT, stop by the Clinical Architecture website and watch this video. I spent a lot of time on the Clinical Architecture website this week reading about all kinds of interesting things. I highly recommend it.

- Apparently the first two Microsoft retail stores (Scottsdale, Arizona or Mission Viejo, California) are looking for a few good people to hire. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited about the idea of a Microsoft retail store. I love visiting the Apple Store because of all the neat toys, and feel that the Microsoft retail stores should be just as well stocked. Road trip anyone?

- medGadget reported on an electronic tongue that essentially tastes food for you. “At this week’s American Chemical Society’s 238th National Meeting, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign presented a study about a sensor that can accurately detect the presence of any of the common sweeteners used in food products. The business card size sensor has color spots that activate when particular chemicals are detected, and the color pattern as a whole identifies the actual sweetener in drinks and even solid foods.” I think I like the old fashioned way better.

- Reuters is reporting that “the recession appears to be easing for U.S. hospitals, although close to a third of hospitals remain in the red, according to a study published on Wednesday. The median profit margin of U.S. hospitals rose from 0.17 percent in the third quarter of 2008 to 3.1 percent in the first quarter of 2009, the analysis from Thomson Reuters found.” – I can’t speak for the rest of the country, but the most recent news from our CEO for last quarter was positive. Here’s hoping that the trend continues.

- Medscape: “Medically Prescribed Heroin Superior to Methadone for Severe, Refractory Opioid Dependence – A new Canadian study, which was not conducted in the United States because of potential funding and approval barriers, shows that treatment with injectable diacetylmorphine — also known as medically prescribed heroin — is more effective than oral methadone for chronic, refractory opioid addiction.” - The actual article is in the August 20 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

- And finally, my laptop died again this week. In fact, it died last night while I was in the middle of writing this post. Thankfully I do almost everything online now with Google Docs and Microsoft Live Mesh, so the damage was only minor. I’m not sure how the rest of you feel about Dell machines, but I haven’t been impressed. Dell is the hardware of choice for my hospital and the folks in the IT department are taking that decision to the grave with them. I’ve asked for permission to purchase my own 15″ MacBook Pro and add it to the hospital network. Unfortunately my request was denied in glorious fashion. With the exception of tablet PCs, I think Apple is building better machines than most Windows based manufacturers at the moment. In my opinion, the best option currently available is to purchase a MacBook Pro and install Windows 7 (when available) on top of Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Can you think of a better machine? I didn’t think so.

Siemens Innovations ’09 – The End

Jerry Fahrni — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:34:37 +0000

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:

I should have stayed an extra day or two. There are two hospitals near here that I would love to visit: Pinnacle Health in Harrisburg and Main Line Health. When I grow up, I want to be like them.

There were over 1000 attendees, representing over 300 healthcare systems, but very few pharmacists. Only 49 individuals registered for the ‘Pharmacy’ track. You don’t have to be a pharmacist to register for the ‘Pharmacy’ track, so it makes me wonder how many pharmacists actually attended the conference. The presentations I attended had small audiences, 20-30 at most. We, i.e. pharmacists, were easily out numbered 10:1 by nursing and IT people.

The emphasis this year was on barcode medication administration (BCMA). I expect this to change as CPOE was what I heard most in the conversations I eavesdropped on. In addition, lots of people were talking about healthcare reform and what meaningful use will look like. I think this is a good thing. Anything that jumpstarts the thought process can only advance healthcare technology.

Many of the presentations in the ‘Pharmacy’ track were given by nurses. What gives?

I spoke to several pharmacists in groups as well as one on one and discovered that they are very interested in what they do, but it stops there. A few time I tried moving the conversation away from the pharmacy systems only to be met with eyes that were starting to glaze over. I have interests in many things within technology and informatics besides those in my direct line of site. For the most part, the pharmacists I spoke with were highly intelligent and apparently very good at what they do, but it was obvious that it was a job for them. This lends credence to my thought that pharmacy informatics and technology is in its infancy as a specialty. We need to move away from the idea that we are the guys that add drugs to the formulary and fix billing errors. We need to expand our ideals and force change within the profession. Physicians had done it; nurses are doing it, but once again pharmacists as waiting for enlightenment to find them. Why is that? If you have an answer I would love to hear it. I’ll jump off my soapbox now.

I saw a few laptops, a few ultra-portables (I assume netbooks), and no tablet PCs. However, there was no shortage of smart phones. I notice things like that and I’m not afraid to walk up to someone and ask them how they like their [insert phone here]. Most nurses and the few physicians I ran into were carrying iPhones. Almost every IT person and vendor I spoke with was using one of BlackBerry devices. To my surprise, pharmacists were using a host of devices other than the iPhone. I found pharmacists using the LG Dare, the Samsung Blackjack, a few BlackBerry devices, and one I-don’t-know-it’s-just-a-phone (couldn’t find a link for that one). Just before leaving I found a pharmacist from Wichita, KS using an iPhone; I was relieved. The lack of iPhone use among pharmacists explains a few things.

Overall Innovations was a good experience, but I am looking forward to the ASHP Midyear in December of this year. I hope to see you all there.