Another video from a company called Perceptive Pixel that does some really interesting stuff with touchscreen technology. Check out their website for more information and some great demonstration videos.

And there’s Microsoft Surface and this Surface demo at CES 2011. Gorilla Glass…cool. I have no idea what I would do with it, but I really think I need one. If you’ve ever been to the Hard Rock Café on the strip in Las Vegas or on Hollywood Blvd in Hollywood, CA then you’ve seen how cool this stuff can be.

The configuration is as follows:

• Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
• Intel Core i5-M560 Processor
• 160GB Intel Solid State Drive
• 8GB RAM
• 14.1-inch WXGA touchscreen…yes, that’s right, it is a touchscreen
• 6 Cell Li-ion battery
• 3-cell ultrabay battery that fits in the DVD slot when I need additional battery
• And all the typical stuff that goes with most laptops, i.e. camera, Bluetooth, wireless (no 3G), etc

Impression
After using the T410s for a little over a week I only have one question, why haven’t I been using Lenovo machines all my life? This is a great laptop. Since purchasing a Lenovo X201 tablet back in November 2010 I haven’t considered using another laptop/tablet manufacturer for my needs. Period. And after using the T410s I know why I feel that way. I have no regrets and think it was the best choice for a new machine, hands down.

People might find the simple matte black finish of the ThinkPad series a bit boring, but there’s something about it that catches my eye. I find the simple lines and no nonsense look of the machine attractive; opened up working or simply closed on the desk. In my opinion it looks like something a professional might carry around and not something a little teenie-bopper opens up at Starbucks (ironically I’m sitting in a Starbucks drinking coffee and composing this blog while waiting for my daughter to finish cheer practice).

The T410s is thin and light. It’s only 0.8- inches thick and weighs in under 4 lbs; much thinner and lighter than my last 14-inch laptop. The build quality is good and it doesn’t feel cheap to me even though much of the housing is made of carbon fiber that looks a bit like plastic. As with my X201 tablet the keyboard is great. It’s easy to type with and doesn’t have the flex I’ve experienced with other machines. It has the same weird configuration with the “Fn” and “Ctrl” keys that I noticed on my tablet. Now that I’m using a Lenovo tablet as well as laptop it’s not a big deal. I’ve gotten used to it. One nice touch on the keyboard is the “Delete” key in the upper right hand corner. It’s double size, which makes it easier to use for some reason. I’ve found it more useful than I would have ever imagined. I suppose that means I make too many typing errors, but what the heck, it works for me.

I enjoy touchscreen devices and the T410s doesn’t disappoint. With its SimpleTap feature I’m able to quickly get to some of the functions that I’m constantly tinkering with like microphone, volume, wireless, camera and the smokin’ awesome reading light at the top of the monitor that illuminates the keyboard when I’m sitting on a dark plane (see image below). Nice touch Lenovo. I find myself reaching up and touching the screen when I need to reposition the cursor. I find that easier at times than moving my thumbs down to use the touchpad.

One thing I really like about the Lenovo machines is the utilities that come pre-installed. Collectively they’re called ThinkVantage, and include utilities for battery management, wireless management, screen management, and so on. I typically don’t like pre-installed utilities on my machines, but Lenovo did it right.

The overall performance of the T410s has been stellar to this point. It’s hard to say what the actual batter life is as I keep going back and forth between the plug, battery, wireless, Bluetooth, etc. Based on usage over the past week or so it looks like it’s around five hours on a full charge with both batteries in place. I consider that fairly solid as I don’t baby my machines. I don’t dim the screen or turn the wireless off when not in use, etc.

With all that said, there are a couple of things that bother me. First there’s no separate microphone jack. I didn’t realize it when I ordered the T410s, but it doesn’t have a separate microphone jack. It has a headphone jack. I find that odd. Next is the screen. While I love the touchscreen capability and it’s fine for my needs, the screen isn’t going win any beauty contests. The images look a little washed out to me. And finally is the modular CD/DVD player. It’s just not very good. In fact it frustrated me to the point where I just pulled it out and keep the 3-cell battery in the slot. I don’t really need a CD-RW so it isn’t a big deal to me, but it might be to someone else.

That’s it, the Lenovo T410s is an awesome machine. I’d buy one again in a heartbeat.

- In the “people are strange” category, Michael Jackson This Is It was #1 at the box office last weekend. My wife and I took in Couples Retreat home today. It was worth the price of admission and it made me laugh. Who could ask for more then that?

- Dave Troy:  “Why Twitter “Lists” Change Everything – Going forward, the primary question will be which specific lists you appear on (influence of curator, quality, scarcity) and, secondarily, how many lists you appear on (reach, influence). Do you think that an author would pay to get onto twitter.com/oprah/incredible-writers? Yeah, I do too. Now imagine that, writ large, and scummier, with people even less reputable than Oprah. Now you see what I’m talking about.” - Wow, what a scary thought.

- BMJ Group blogs:  “The beginning of the end for impact factors and journals. Slowly but surely these metrics [“article level metrics”]  will become much superior to using the impact factor of the journal in which an article is published as a surrogate for the impact of the article itself. Although a routine practice, this is wholly unscientific because there is very little correlation between the impact of a journal and the impact of the articles it publishes—because the impact factor of the journal is driven by a few articles that are very highly cited.” – This is a very interesting article that makes a lot of sense. I highly recommend you read the entire thing when you have a moment.

- HealthDay:  “Let Kids Sleep Late on Weekends to Fight Fat: Study – Researchers in Hong Kong found that children who got less sleep tended to be heavier (as measured by body mass index, or BMI) than children who slept more. But among children who slept less than eight hours a night, those who compensated for their weekday sleep deficit by sleeping late on weekends or holidays were significantly less likely to be overweight or obese.” – Well, that coveres sleeping in on the weekends. Now if they could only prove that watching Scooby-Doo on Saturday morning could decrease your BMI.

- Boy Genius Report: “It’s amazing how a simple double-tap gesture will dramatically change the usability of a touch-screen-based browser. Literally, it’s one thing (besides CPU speed, a great screen obviously, etc.) that makes a big difference. Again, there’s no multi-touch and to be honest, a simple pinch-zoom gesture is really missed.” – Yep, that about sums it up for me. I spent about an hour playing with the DROID in a local Verizon store today and the lack of multi-touch makes the browser experience less than stellar. Too bad really, because it has some great feature. On the other hand, the HTC DROID ERIS by HTC was sitting right next to it and turned out to be a great device. Too bad the screen is only 3.2”.

- Macro Linz: “The web started out as knowledge gathering tools for building archives. Websites, wikis, link repositories like Del.icio.us, an untold number of file archives, search, RSS and all the tools that bring it to you like GoogleReader… All that is the heart of the web. There is little personal connection in knowledge gathering tools though some of them have “social” aspects. They are not about community, but about sharing and collating information.” – This article is well written and brings up some interesting points about the web and social media tools. As I’ve said before, use it however you want, it’s just a tool.

- RxInformatics.com: “A coalition of 9 hospitals implemented best practices for medication administration reporting an astonishing 88% [link] reduction in medication errors. These best practices did not include bar code medication administration (see listing below). CalNOC (the California Nursing Outcomes Coalition) “best practices” for medication administration: 1. Compare medication to medical record 2. Keep medication labeled until administration < 3. Check two forms of patient identification 4. Immediately record medication administration in chart 5. Explain the medication to the patient 6. Minimize distractions and disruptions during the administration process.“ – This post was written by John Poikonen. I’ve mentioned John before because he has an interesting view on bar code medication administration (BCMA). While John and I don’t necessarily see eye-to-eye on the use of BCMA, he makes a great point with his post on low-tech error prevention. None of the methods listed to decrease errors is new, but they are often overlooked. It’s important to remember that technology cannot replace the human factor. Diligence plus technology is a winner though.

- And not to be outdone, Barbara Olson (@SafetyNurse) posted this nice response at Florence dot com: “What the San Francisco nurses really studied is whether adherence to a system designed to elicit a specific outcome yields the desired outcome more often than using a loosely defined, variably employed set of expectations does. Minimizing distractions was an important part of the interventions, but it wasn’t the only one. Understanding that the nurses did not find one “magic bullet,” but rather moved from an “intention-based” process to a process that was both engineered and adhered to helps to explain the very favorable, highly desirable results obtained.” – Good read.

- David Bradley (@sciencebase) has a great post at the sciencetext website that talks about how to decide which Twitter accounts to follow. “Twitter is the place to be online and tips abound. But, how do you decide whether to follow someone who has followed you? There are some basic filters you can use, like not following back obvious spammers and scammers and generally not following people with protected tweets unless you know them already.” He’s gone as far as to create a great “Twitter Decision Flowchart”. The flowchart is a funny because it’s true.

Barcoding Blog: “Microsoft recently announced that they intend to become a key player in RFID technology. More specifically, they plan to provide RFID-enabled software for mid-size companies to better manage their supply chains. For more information on Microsoft and RFID, download their whitepaper Microsoft & RFID.” – I’m a big fan of RFID technology and think it has a place in healthcare. Unfortunately I’m about the only one that thinks that.

- Healthcare IT News: ” The five recommendations [to improving medication adherence] are: Quality Improvement, Care Coordination, Health IT, Patient/Provider Education and Engagement, Health Services Research. The recommendations were developed following a July conference attended by more than 40 medication adherence experts, including providers, patients, payers and academics.” – I have to laugh when I read something like this. It took 40 “experts” to come up with a list that half the high-schoolers in America could have developed in half the time for a lot less money. This falls in the “no kidding?” category.

- Laika’s MedLibLog’s Twitter Lists of Medical and other Scientific Journals. The same website has this cool video called “Flu Attach! How A Virus Invades Your Body”.

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- I sent out a Tweet yesterday asking all pharmacists, MDs and nurses what mobile devices there were using. I received a whopping four responses and they were all for the iPhone. I guess people who don’t use the iPhone don’t tweet.

- Gizmodo has a few more details about the Microsoft Courier. I really hope this device comes to market. If the details regarding the Courier are accurate it could fill a real need in certain niche markets. I’d buy one.

- Another device I’d like to lay my little hands on is the enTourage eDGe. The eDGe offers a dual screen clamshell design with an e-reader on one side and a netbook on the other. The company is taking pre-orders now for February 2010 deliver.

- Thank goodness that the baseball season is finally over. The Yankees won the World Series for anyone that really cares. For the record, the Yankees payroll was $208,097,414 while the Phillies was 111,209,046. Who says you can’t buy a championship.

- My Arizona Cardinals take on the Chicago Bears this Sunday. It’s too bad they have to play each others because I really like the Bears, but not enough to pick ‘em over my Cardinals. Go Cards!

Have a great weekend everyone.

As I said in a previous post: “Touchscreens are becoming more and more popular, especially with the increased use of smartphones, UMPCs, and MIDs. Touchscreen navigation on these smaller devices is a must if you hope to make them useful to the user. While a touchscreen isn’t a necessity on larger device yet, it is a welcome luxury. Like most great technological advances, it will take quite some time for touchscreens to filter down into pharmacy, but I think it’ll eventually get here. After all you don’t have to use the touchscreen for navigation, but it sure would be a nice option to have. Imagine entering an order on a CPOE system with nothing more than the tip of your finger. If properly designed, the physician wouldn’t have to type anything. Simply tap a pre-built link with the drug, dose, route and frequency desired and hit “send’. “

- Gateway is jumping in to the tablet PC game with the EC18T tablet along with Acer and the Aspire Timeline 1810T. With the addition of Gateway, I think every major Windows based computer manufacturer now has a tablet.

- Motion Computing is reportedly upgrading the screens in their C5 and F5 tablets with gorilla glass. Manufactured by Corning, Gorilla Glass is an alkali-aluminosilicate thin sheet glass designed specifically for portable display devices.

- There was an article in The New York Times questioning whether or not the tablet will actually find mainstream acceptance. There’s no question in my mind that they will. This is especially true with new designs like the Microsoft Courier booklet and the mythical Apple tablet. The most recent Apple tablet rumor has it shipping sometime in the first quarter of 2010.

- GottaBeMobile.com has an article titled “Why Tablets Flopped (and How They Can Unflop)” that talks about why tablet PC’s “haven’t taken off yet and how they still can”. It’s quite simple, really. The technology has always appealed to niche markets, mainly the business world. As the devices continue to develop, the market will grow. This is especially true with the emergence of multi-touch and Surface technologies.

- Speaking of touch technology, TechCrunch has a great article on new touch technology and what it means for the future of computing.

- If you want to try something really unique on your tablet pc desktop, then I recommend you take a look at BumpTop. BumpTop is an interactive 3D desktop that has some really incredible features. Check out the video below.

- TabletKiosk is offering multi-touch NetSlate tablets. This is interesting because TabletKiosk was the only real competitor for Motion Computing for slate tablets in the healthcare industry. Now it looks like they may have a slight advantage.

- John Biggs at CrunchGear wrote about “The coming tablet wars”. Besides using some great graphics, John does a nice job of presenting a condensed version of where tablet PCs have been and where they’re headed. Take a look at the Apple Newton photo in the post. The Newton came out in the early 90’s and was one of the most advanced devices of its time. It had a very loyal cult following. Apple made a huge mistake by not continuing to develop the Newton.

- Blogging with “ink” looks interesting. I’ve thought about trying it many times, but I don’t know if I really want people looking at my handwriting. I also think I type faster than I write. Who knows, it may be in my future.

I’m still not sure why tablet PCs haven’t become more popular. Consider this; would you rather have a laptop that could never be used as a tablet PC, or a tablet PC that could be used as a laptop as well as “pen and paper”? That’s what I thought.

My other tablet PC posts can be found here and my thoughts on the application of tablet PCs in pharmacy are summed up in this PDF document.

The author further discusses the likelihood of more and more touchscreen devices, especially notebooks, coming to the market in the near future. Extending the idea a little further, what about the use of touchscreens in healthcare, and more specifically pharmacy? I don’t see the need for touchscreen devices when sitting at a terminal typing your life away, but what about when you’re standing in front of a computer terminal. I always feel a desire to touch a computer screen when I’m standing in front of it, which seems odd because I frequently yell at people for touching my desktop monitors with their grimy little fingers. It must have something to do with ergonomics or perhaps because it’s not always intuitive to grab a mouse while standing.

Our AutoPack machine from Talyst has a touchscreen, but most of the packager’s functionality is controlled by a remote terminal a few feet away. And on the other side of the pharmacy, our automated storage carousel (AutoCarousel) doesn’t have a touchscreen, but I wish it did. I’ve mentioned before that I think this would be a nice option. As I mentioned above, I always feel compelled to reach out and touch the monitor when standing in front of the carousel. It feels like a more natural movement for some reason. The monitor is right in front of my face and it always feels awkward to reach down and grab the mouse. Of course I could use the keyboard to move around, but a simple tap on the screen would be faster. I’ve spoken with one of the Talyst engineers about using a touchscreen on the carousel, and while they have looked into it and feel it could be easily done, I was reminded that the AutoPharm software was not currently optimized for touchscreen operation. Ah and there’s the rub, most software isn’t quite ready for all the new touchscreen technology. While Windows 7 will bring advanced multi-touch capabilities to the operating system, software just isn’t quite ready to take advantage of all that great functionality.

Touchscreens are becoming more and more popular, especially with the increased use of smartphones, UMPCs, and MIDs. Touchscreen navigation on these smaller devices is a must if you hope to make them useful to the user. While a touchscreen isn’t a necessity on larger device yet, it is a welcome luxury. Like most great technological advances, it will take quite some time for touchscreens to filter down into pharmacy, but I think it’ll eventually get here. After all you don’t have to use the touchscreen for navigation, but it sure would be a nice option to have. Imagine entering an order on a CPOE system with nothing more than the tip of your finger. If properly designed, the physician wouldn’t have to type anything. Simply tap a pre-built link with the drug, dose, route and frequency desired and hit “send’.

What about the application of a Microsoft Surface system in the pharmacy that could allow pharmacists to pull up interactive patient information while sitting around a table. Or perhaps the same idea could apply to medical teams, allowing them to perform virtual rounds with every system in the hospital literally at their fingertips. The possible applications for touchscreen technology in pharmacy makes my brain hurt.

What do you think?

Imprivata OneSign Platform:”Imprivata helps organizations secure employee, contractor and temporary hire access to desktops, networks, applications, and transactions – - enforcing who gets access; providing visibility into what was accessed; and ultimately, terminating all of a user’s network and application access, instantly. Imprivata OneSign® is an identity and access management platform that strengthens user authentication to networks; streamlines application access; and simplifies the process of compliance reporting–all delivered through a secure, self-contained appliance that requires zero modifications to existing IT infrastructure, and is centrally managed from a single administrative console. “ – The Imprivata OneSign Platform offers single sign-on to all enterprise applications. This is something I’ve been interested in as pharmacists have to log into no less than five different systems to do their job; at our facility anyway. It makes sense to me to use information from a single location to create single sign-on access for employees. The OneSign Platform is pretty flexible, allowing users to choose from password validation, proximity cards, RFID, biometric scan, and flash drives among other options for user authentication.

Toughbook T8: “Lightweight, yet Durable – Weighing in at 3.3 lbs., the Toughbook® T8 business-rugged laptop combines light weight and durability, with a built-in a magnesium alloy case, sanitizable rubber hand strap, embedded wireless, and added security and remote management with Intel® Centrino® 2 with vPro™ technology. Built with legendary Toughbook reliability and unparalleled portability, the drop- and spill-resistant Toughbook T8 keeps up with today’s busy mobile professionals.” – I had an opportunity to play with this tough little dude and I have to say I was impressed. The T8 is light enough to hold securely in one hand via the strap located on the underside. It’s not a full blown tablet PC, but does offer a nice touchscreen interface, which allows you to move around the screen with only your finger. And it’s tough. The T8 is designed to survive a fall of 2.5-3 feet. The only thing missing, in my opinion, was a swivel screen.