Facebook is one of those social media sites that I’ve reserved for light hearted interaction with friends and family. I talk about what I’m up to, share some photos, comment on things here and there, but generally check my professional life at the door. I certainly don’t put anything on Facebook that is inappropriate, but I like keeping some separation between my personal and professional life.

So, do large companies or professional organizations like ASHP belong on Facebook? That question poses an unusual degree of difficulty for me, but in general I don’t think they do. I’m not naïve enough to think that everything on Facebook is private. Greg Leatham says much the same thing in the ASHP Intersection article, “I caution people, especially students, who are often a little more free with what they put on their site, that it doesn’t matter where you plan to work”. You should never put anything online that you woulnd’t want your mom to see or that appears morally or ethically questionable. On occasion I will banter back and forth with my brother (@Fahrni) on Twitter, but it’s light hearted and never contains anything that could be considered inappropriate. And sometimes I’ll leave comments on Facebook giving my nieces a hard time, but I’m their uncle and that’s the kind of fun-loving relationship we have; always in jest.

Becasue I reserve Facebook for personal interactions I typically use Twitter for pharmacy or technology interests. Of course that’s not true 100% of the time, but it is a realtively accurate generalization in my case. Twitter offers both a professional and personal sounding board for me, but my thoughts are limited to 140 characters and the entire Twitter community has a different feel to it when compared to Facebook. Facebook has a more intimate feel in my opinion. I just don’t see following, friending or otherwise becoming engaged with businesses or organizations on Facebook. That doesn’t mean I don’t have colleagues as friends on Facebook. Heck, if you really want to know what I’m up to in my personal life, want to hear about what my kids are up to, or want to see photos of my family, I’d be happy to “friend you”; unless you’re creepy, then you can’t be my friend. Otherwise my Facebook page isn’t the place for you.

I chose to keep separate areas for my professional and personal social media activities. How about you? This is definitely a topic worth discussion and it is probably time to formalize social media education in the pharmacy curriculum. Otherwise we’re looking for trouble down the road. Just a thought.

For some interesting facts and figures about social media use and health care, check out the presentation below by Kevin Clauson. If you want to see where things can go wrong with Facebook go to slides 49-52.

Definition of Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0: A Systematic Review
Tom H Van De Belt1, MSc; Lucien JLPG Engelen1; Sivera AA Berben1, MSc; Lisette Schoonhoven2, PhD

ABSTRACT
Background: During the last decade, the Internet has become increasingly popular and is now an important part of our daily life. When new “Web 2.0” technologies are used in health care, the terms “Health 2.0″ or “Medicine 2.0” may be used.
Objective: The objective was to identify unique definitions of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0 and recurrent topics within the definitions.
Methods: A systematic literature review of electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL) and gray literature on the Internet using the search engines Google, Bing, and Yahoo was performed to find unique definitions of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0. We assessed all literature, extracted unique definitions, and selected recurrent topics by using the constant comparison method.
Results: We found a total of 1937 articles, 533 in scientific databases and 1404 in the gray literature. We selected 46 unique definitions for further analysis and identified 7 main topics.
Conclusions: Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0 are still developing areas. Many articles concerning this subject were found, primarily on the Internet. However, there is still no general consensus regarding the definition of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0. We hope that this study will contribute to building the concept of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0 and facilitate discussion and further research.
(J Med Internet Res 2010;12(2):e18)
doi:10.2196/jmir.1350

Below is a list of opinions about a great many things that I have seen and done over the past year. Some are pharmacy related, some are technology related, some are personal, and some are just random thoughts.

Best idea for acute care pharmacy – “Auto-verification” of orders with CPOE.

Best idea for new pharmacy practice model – Technology-enabled practice:
A vision statement by the ASHP Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology. Am J Health Syst Pharm.2009; 66: 1573-1577.

Best idea in pharmacy that has yet to mature – Clinical Surveillance software.

Best clinical surveillance software reviewed, but not purchases – Sentri7 by Pharmacy OneSource

Best drug information resource, hardcopy – Lexi-Comp Drug Information Handbook.

Best drug information resource, handheld/electronic – Lexi-Comp Lexi-Drugs & Lexi-Interact

Best pharmacokinetics calculator, handheld/electronic – RxCalc for the iPhone, of course.

Best medical reference, electronic/web based – UpToDate. (includes access to Lexi-Drugs, online version)

Biggest fall from grace – Pyxis becoming CareFusion. Unfortunately the customer service I was used to receiving from Pyxis went in the toilet when they broke away from the mother ship to form CareFusion.

Best bar code scanner used this year – Code Reader 3500. We’ve had some problems getting it to work properly with our carousel, but it is a great little bar code scanner.

Worst bar code scanner used this year – Code Reader CR3. After using the Code Reader 3500, the CR3 feels like a relic.

Biggest bar coding challenge for me this year – Figuring out how to bar code our pediatric syringes.

Most valuable data collected – Data from our Alaris smart pumps

Least useful data collected – Pharmacist intervention data collected in Siemens. We just can’t get pharmacists to record this information.

Worst software upgrade – Siemens pharmacy system. Man, was that a fiasco. I’d like to spend a little “quality time” with the developer of that system.

Best tablet that never was – The Apple iSlate. Will I purchase one when it finally hits the market? Yeah, probably.

Best mock-up of the mythical Apple Tablet. Deemed the “MacBook Touch” by Designer Tommaso Gecchelin.

Best eReader – The Nook. Say what you will, but I purchased a Nook for my daughter and it is very nice, easy to use and just plain cool.

Best applications I discovered this year – Evernote and LiveMesh. I couldn’t live without them.

Best screen capture utility – ScreenHunter

Best tablet PC I used this year – I think it has to go to my Dell XT2 Tablet PC. It’s not the perfect tablet, but I will rank it above the Motion Computing J3400, C5, and LE1700 I used this year. I already have my eye on a Lenovo X200 tablet PC for 2010. Stay tuned.

Best not-a-tablet-not-an-ereader device – The enTourage eDGe. This device is probably my next purchase.

Best tablet pc blogger on the ‘net – Warner Crocker (@WarnerCrocker) of GottaBeMobile.com.

Best UMPC blogger on the ‘net – Steve ‘Chippy’ Paine (@chippy) of UMPCPortal.com.

Best everything moble site on the ‘net – jkOnTheRun

Best new smartphone – Hands down, the Motorola Droid.

Most exciting developments in an operating system – Android. We’re seeing it in smartphones and netbooks. It will be interesting to see where it goes in 2010.

Best smartphone user interface – The iPhone. It isn’t my smartphone of choice, but it sure has a nice UI.

Best meeting/conference attended – ASHP Midyear 2009.

Best advice I received – This one came from my brother, Robert. His advice to me: “Get a Twitter account and start blogging.” Thanks, bro.

Best presentation attended – There were two presentations I attended at Midyear that really caught my attention: 1) Integrating Technology to Improve Medication-Use Patient Safety (PDF) and 2) Pharmacy 2.0: How the Web is Changing How We Practice

Best webinar attended – Pharmacy Face-Off: BCMA vs. CPOE, Which Comes First?

Best vendor I worked with this year – Talyst

Worst vendor I worked with this year – Siemens

Best RSS Reader – Google Reader

Best online collaboration tool – Google Docs

Best new thing that people won’t use – Google Wave

Best search engine – Bing is pretty solid, but Google still rules.

Best browser for Windows machine – Hmm, tough call. Firefox still has my vote, with Google Chrome a close second.

Best tablet PC software – Microsoft OneNote

Best Twitter client for the Droid – Seesmic for Android. Still waiting for a TweetDeck Android app. Do you hear me TweetDeck people?

Best Twitter client for the desktop – TweetDeck, without question.

Best desktop operating system – While I’m impressed with Windows 7, I’m forced to give the nod to Mac OS X.

Best movies at the box office – Tough one for me as Lori and I see a lot of movies. I don’t watch movies for the plot, story line or acting. I like to be entertained. So, based on that here we go:

• Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
• Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
• Avatar
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• Star Trek – This may have been the “best”

Biggest grossing movie of 2009 – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. It did over $400,000 at the box office.

Worst movie at the box office – Watchman. What a terrible movie; total waste of time.

Most overused word – Anything with a “2.0” in it, i.e. Web 2.0, Gov 2.0, Pharmacy 2.0, Med 2.0, Health 2.0, Cheeseburger 2.0, Coffee 2.0, etc.

Most valuable lesson learned in 2009 – Be patient.

Best thing I did for myself – Lose 40 pounds. I feel much better.

Best surprise in professional football – The Arizona Cardinals made it to the Super Bowl.

Biggest disappointment in professional football – The Arizona Cardinals lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl.

Worst coaching decision in professional football – Bill Belichick going for it on 4th down against the colts.

Dumbest play by a professional football player, on the field – Leodis McKelvin’s decision to return a kickoff instead of taking a touchback when the Buffalo Bills were leading the Patriots in the fourth quarter of a game they had won. The fumble ultimately led to the Bills losing to the Patriots 25 – 24.

Biggest disappointment in collage football – The USC Trojans not winning the Pac-10. Bummer.

Most overrated college football player – Tim Tebow

Most overrated college football team for 2009 – The Florida Gators

Worst system in the universe to determine a sports champion – The BCS. The current bowl system is all about money and has almost nothing to do with sports.

Worst professional sport to watch on TV or in person – Major League Baseball.

Here’s to a New Year full of new and wondrous things.

The study was conducted via a questionnaire consisting of 21 questions administered to 299 incoming pharmacy students. Of the 299 students surveyed, 244 (88%) had an existing Facebook profile. The average daily time spent of Facebook was approximately 22 minutes.

One of the most troubling aspects of college students and Facebook is the apparent disconnect on their opinions of fair use’ of Facebook profiles by others and the reality of their open access nature. With regard to employers, Facebook provides information that resumes, transcripts, and interviews may not provide. While a literature review revealed no research on if/how employers of doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) graduates use online social networking information in hiring decisions, general population studies suggest that 11% of all employers access interviewees’ Facebook profiles during the hiring process.9 Over half (57%) of the pharmacy students in this study with Facebook profiles indicated that it was unfair for employers to use this information, and 36% have posted some type of information that they would not want potential employers to see. These results suggest that many pharmacy students do not have a full understanding of what constitutes private versus public information and/or of the possible ramifications of making private information public. One might not want behaviors and attitudes from private settings to be used in judging professional or career-related abilities; however, once private actions become public, the distinct private life (as has been traditionally defined) ceases to exist. Because of the rapid onset of technologies that have created and popularized online personas, society has yet to adjust to this new paradigm. Philosophically, many of us are now struggling with how to delineate between public and private with regard to personal information freely provided in online settings. Until society is able to grasp the new paradigm, further discussion on online identity protection is warranted.

It’s pretty simple really; don’t put anything online that you don’t want the entire world to see. Yeah, the internet is that big. The creation of the internet, and specifically social media, has created a system that is completely transparent and available to anyone with online access. You can’t hide online.

On occasion I will download the most recent version reincarnation of IE. I’m not sure why I do it, but I do. No matter what changes Microsoft makes the browsing experience just isn’t what it could be. IE improves with each release to be sure, but the improvements always seem to come up short.

My latest browser experiment is Safari for Windows. I’ve had Apple computers for years and was excited to give it the old collage try on a Windows machine. It certainly has a lot to offer and, like everything Apple, is easy on the eyes. Unfortunately it tends to lock up on me at the most inopportune times. So for now I’ll continue to use it to mirror my browsing, but won’t use it as my primary browser just yet.

Google Chrome is a great little browser. I’m a minimalist by nature, which is probably why I’m drawn to Chrome. It has a very slick user interface and moves quickly from page to page. The knock I have against Chrome is interestingly the same thing I love about it; simplicity. I like to use a lot of “tools” when I browse the internet. I clip sites, use my finger to browse while on my tablet, capture references, highlight pages, so on and so forth. Chrome doesn’t yet offer many of these extras. I frequently keep Chrome minimized on my toolbar for those times when I need to quickly look something up. So I guess that makes it my back-up browser of choice.

Firefox is a great browser. I love the functionality it offers with all the incredible add-ons freely available just for the asking. Some of my favorite add-ons include: Evernote Web Clipper, FoxTab, IE Tab, Read it Later, ScrapBook, Session Manger, Wired-Marker and my all time favorite Zotero (image below). Zotero is a great online research tool that makes collecting information a snap. Along with Evernote, I use it almost daily. It is for these reasons that Firefox is my browser of choice. I just can’t live without all the additional functionality it has to offer. No matter how often I try to switch browsers I always find myself drawn back to Firefox. The only improvement I would make is to have all your add-ons stored online so they didn’t have to be loaded on every machine you use. Other then that, Firefox is almost the perfect browsing tool.

- Zobieland was #1 at the box office last weekend. Great movie.

- I’ve been thinking about facial recognition a lot lately. My brother works for a company that applies analytics to their video systems to identify people and other objects, even license plates. We’ve discussed the possibility of applying this technology to tablet identification. I also think there’s a place for facial recognition in healthcare. Facial recognition is simply another biometic ID. We use fingerprint scanning on our Pyxis stations now, why not facial recognition. The technology appears to be maturing. A research team from the School of Computing Sciences at UEA found that computers could outperform human lip-readers by a large margin. We also know that the Faces feature in Apple’s iPhoto ‘09 and Picasa from Google offer facial recognition tagging for photos. Just a thought.

- PTR: “These tools [Web 2.0] provide you with a unique approach to forming better ties to your customers. Blogging is a great way to start. You could blog about seasonal allergies and what you recommend for your LOCAL ENVIRONMENT. You could feature biographies on your (willing) staff and create a common place for customer comments and interaction. Interaction is the key. It’s a social medium that enables you to reach out to your customers as creatively as you want.” – That’s really the crux of the matter. Blog about things that interest you and make connections with people of similar mind. It really works. Todd has more information on the subject, in the form of a 7 page document, here.

- Medscape performed a survey on which EMR systems users felt was the best. Amazing Charts received the highest marks while Cerner received the lowest. Interesting.

- The New England Journal of Medicine (N Engl J Med 2009;361:1448-1458,1502-1504) is reporting that doxycycline is effective against infection with Mansonella perstans, a filarial parasite. M. perstans is found primarily in sub-Saharan Africa and is refractory to standard antifilarial therapies. Doxycycline is a great drug that still carries significant value and is sadly underutilized.

- A study in the Journal of Pain (J Pain. 2009;10:944–952) found that “Self-medication of pain with alcohol is most common among younger nonHispanic white males and associated with pain frequency, depression, and use of pain medications. Alcohol use for pain needs to be assessed so that health care providers can make appropriate referrals and adjustments to treatment.” Not good.

- Medscape lists 19 drugs that the FDA is keeping an eye on for safety risks. All drugs come with some inherent risk, some are just worse than others.

- IT World: “Market research firm NPD put out a study earlier this week about the market penetration of various PC brands, which was full of all sorts of interesting information, but the one that was most interesting to me was that almost 85 percent of households with Macs also have at least one Windows PC. (And no, the reverse is not also true.)” – I guess I’m normal. I have 4 Macs, 3 desktops and 1 MacBook, two Windows laptops and a Windows tablet PC. People continue to move toward Macs for various reasons, but will always be tied to Windows secondary to it being the standard in many industries. With that said, it’s quite simple and easy to run Windows on Mac desktops and laptops. That’s something I think Microsoft should embrace. After all, they don’t sell hardware, they sell software.

- Someone finally decided that the Apple MacBook Air should be copied. The Sony Vaio X is an 11.1-inche notbook that is a whopping 0.55 inches thick and weighs 1.6 pounds. That’s thin and light. Oh yeah, it also boasts a 14 hour battery life with the extended battery pack. Now if I could only convince Sony to add a Pixel Qi LCD screen and make it a convertible laptop it would be perfect.

- We’ve got some hot new cell phones hitting the market soon. The HTC HD2 is a great looking smartphone running a modified version of Windows mobile. The touchscreen is huge with a 4.3 inch surface. Check out the video here. The Palm Pixi is also headed for a mobile provider near you. I like what the Pixi has to offer, WebOS, tactile keyboard, multi-touch screen, etc., but I don’t like the footprint or the screen size. Check out the Palm Pixi Artist Series, I like the skull.

- Powermat Home & Office Mat: ” Wirelessly charges up to 3 Powermat-enabled devices simultaneously (plus one USB power port). Works with all Powermat receivers. Universal Powercube with 8 tips is included to enable you to charge hundreds of different devices.” – Available for $99 at Best Buy. I want one.

- The Angry Pharmacist: “What kills my soul (which a lot of things do, this being one of them), is when patients have a tiny-yet-dangerous bit of medical knowledge gained through the internet or one nursing class 15 years ago. Then the bullshit they spout actually sounds like it really did come from the doctor or pharmacist even though its completely wrong.” – There’s a some truth in that statement. Sometimes a little information found via the internet can be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands. That’s why it’s important to discuss this information with your healthcare provider while keeping an open mind.

- President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. Hmm, that’s great for the United States and Washington D.C., but I have to wonder what body of work the decision was based on. I  believe the last US President to win this award was Jimmy Carter in 2002, long after he left office, for his “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” Note the keyword “decades”.

- How cool is this, NASA crashed a rocket into the moon in search of hidden ice. It’s kind of like what my brothers and I do on the 4th of July, only on a much larger scale. You can see video of the crash here, but it’s not much to look at.

- The top five search engine phrases used by people to arrive at my site this week: 1. “iphone apps for pharmacists”, 2. “pharmacists curriculum vitae”, 3. “dell xt2”, 4. “arra cope”, 5. “pyxis dispensing system pros and cons”.

- Would someone please put professional baseball out of its misery. We have professional football, college football, the United Football League, professional basketball and professional hockey to watch this time of year. We don’t need baseball playoffs in snowy Colorado. Shorten the season and finish up in September for crying out loud.

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Have a great weekend everyone.

Keeping up requires a combination of technology and a little will power. Some things I’ve found helpful include:

1. Twitter – Twitter is supposed to be a micro-blogging social network, but it’s turned into a great source of information on pretty much anything you can imagine. The more I use Twitter, the more I come to rely on it for up to the minute information on technology, healthcare, and pharmacy. It reminds me of a mini-RSS feed. In fact, it has almost replaced the traditional RSS feed on my desktop.

2. Google Reader – While Twitter is slowly becoming my primary source of information, I’m just not ready to give up my RSS feeds. Find websites and blogs that you can rely on and collect them in a centralized location. Any RSS reader will do, but my personal choice is Google Reader.

3. Clinical Reader – Clinical Reader is an unusual combination of aggregated websites and journals. The service is in the beta phase, but looks promising.

4. BlackBag – BlackBag is an iPhone application by Ortho-McNeil that offers up medical news from multiple sources in a mobile format. I’ve found it useful as many of the clips are from sources I would not normally read.

5. Evernote – Evernote is a great way to keep track of pretty much everything, from quick notes to entire web pages. In addition to the web interface, Evernote offers versions for mobile phones (iPhone and BlackBerry) and the desktop. I’ve been using Evernote off and on for a while, but to see its true value take a look at the public Evernote folder created by RxInformatics.com. Wow!

6. Pick several journals to follow. Keep it reasonable. If you try to follow too many journals you’ll never be able to keep up. My list includes American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, Hospital Pharmacy, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Journal of the American Medical Association, Journal of the American Medical informatics Association,  Annals of Pharmacotherpy, Journal of the American Pharmacists Association, Pharmacotherpy, Annals of Internal Medicine, and a few “throw-a-ways”. Read the table of contents with each new issue and dig deeper into the articles that interest you. Most medical literature publishers offer some form of RSS feed to keep you informed (see #1 and #2 above).

7. Go mobile – There’s nothing easier than reading on the go, or better yet listening to podcasts. Devices like the iPhone and the BlackBerry series make it a snap. The combination of Twitter and Evernote on a mobile device makes keeping up and keeping track easier than ever before. Take advantage of the mobile environment when you can.

8. Colleagues – This is a big one. Making contact with people you trust and using them for information is key. Remember, there is always someone harder working, better informed and smarter. The trick is finding those people and picking their brains.

In his blog Eury states that “According to Tim O’Reilly: “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as a platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. ”

These tools provide you with a unique approach to forming better ties to your customers. Blogging is a great way to start…You could feature biographies on your (willing) staff and create a common place for customer comments and interaction. Interaction is the key. It’s a social medium that enables you to reach out to your customers as creatively as you want.”

Examples of internet social medium given include Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook.  All very popular and effective tools for communication.

An article in InformationWeek on social networking in large companies tends to agree with Eury’s assessment that Web 2.0 technology and social networking has its place.