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.
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“What’d I miss?” – Week of July 13
Poor economy equals fewer pharmacy IT projects
Healthcare IT News: “The economy is forcing hospitals to consider delaying or scaling back their IT projects, according to a survey of America’s “most wired” hospitals and health systems.The Most Wired Survey, conducted annually by Hospitals & Health Networks magazine, the journal of the American Hospital Association, found that even with incentives being made available to implement IT, hospitals still have a long way to go.”
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Windows 7 Ink Input and Tablet PC
Tablet PCs have tremendous value in a decentralized pharmacy model. I am a big fan and have been fortunate enough to have both a Director of Pharmacy and CIO that are supportive of technology and my desire to use it. Last year our department configured two tablet PCs to be used by our critical care and pediatric pharmacists. The tablets are primarily used on rounds to gather information on patients. While utilizing the tablets the pharmacists have full access to our Siemens Pharmacy System for the patient’s medication record and crucial labs. In addition, the pharmacists can access the nursing and physician clinical systems, giving them quick access to additional information such as H&Ps, physician progress notes, nursing progress notes, finger stick results and much more. The tablets have been well received by the pharmacists.
You can imagine my excitement when my brother sent me an interesting link to a “blog dedicated to the engineering of Microsoft Windows 7.” The page contains information specific to advances to the tablet PC input experience. Improvements to the writing pad were deperately needed and the addition of text prediction on the soft keyboard will be a welcome addition. I’m looking forward to the next generation of tablet PCs. Our department has plans to roll out an additional 5 tablets over the next 12 months. Maybe I can hold out for Windows 7.
Batch Files to Increase Pharmacy Efficiency
Our hospital utilizes a decentralized model. One pharmacist in the main pharmacy takes care of the dispensing duties while the rest of the pharmacists are responsible for order entry, kinetics and trouble shooting in their respective areas.
The pharmacist located in the ICU typically participates in daily rounds each morning. If you are familiar with how rounding works, then you know that a pharmacist’s main job is to evaluate drug therapy based on lots of data (patient condition, diagnosis, age, gender, weight, renal status, etc). Accessing this data at the point-of-care is never easy for a pharmacist and they will often rely on the old “pen an paper” to get the job done. With all the advances in technology it just didn’t seem right for them to be doing it this way. Solution? A tablet PC.
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