Month: May 2009

Barcode symbologies….what’s in your pharmacy.

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I had a brief exchange with a colleague a few days back and the subject of where manufacturers were headed with barcoding came up. It’s an interesting discussion. As mentioned in a previous post the number of available barcode ready, unit-dosed medications has been slowly shrinking. As manufacturers work with government agencies and pharmacy organizations to come up with a standardized barcode format, it appears that they have put their unit-dosed, barcode ready medications on the back burner.

Manufacturers have a lot of barcode options to choose from, which may be contributing to the difficulty in developing a standard. However, it is important for the pharmaceutical industry to realize that the need for a barcode standard is ultimately driven by a goal for patient safety.

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Even the best things can be improved.

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I had the opportunity to speak with a nice young lady from Talyst this morning about extending our barcoding system to our pharmacy satellites. She had great insight into what we wanted to do and offered some very helpful tips. The conversation took an interesting turn when she asked me how I liked the system and where I thought improvements could be made. After the initial shock of a vendor asking me my opinion, we spent a few minutes discussing the system and how our workflow has changed for the better.

Overall, we have been very pleased with our barcoding system. I wish all platforms ran as smoothly as our Talyst products. However, there is always room for improvement. I understand that Talyst is currently working on a “big” new release of their AutoPharm software that is focused on patient safety. I don’t have specifics, but it is possible that some of the items listed here are already in the works.

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Google outage raises questions about cloud computing.

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ZDNet: “On Thursday, a major outage affecting 14% of Google users caused widespread panic, and raised questions about cloud computing in general. This outage happened just when the US Goverment began discussing how cloud computing fits into their $78 billion IT budget for 2010. Running companies (and the Goverment for that matter) in the cloud … Read more

Cool Technology For Pharmacy

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Sentri7 is a clinical rules engine by PharmacyOneSource that offers real-time identification and alerts for possible intervention opportunities. The software is web-based and can function with existing hospital software to analyze medicaiton lists, laboratory results and patient data to provide pharmacists with automated clinical monitoring.

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Extending the reach of AutoPharm/AutoCarousel with “the wall”

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In March of 2008 our hospital implemented a system to meet a district wide initiative for 100% barcoded medications in the pharmacy. The barcoding project for the pharmacy was immense, involving a pharmacy remodel, hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds (if not thousands) of man hours.

The project included the implementation of an automated bulk packager capable of creating unit-dosed, barcode ready medications (AutoPack), a barcode labeling system (AutoLabel) and an automated medication storage and retrieval system (AutoCarousel with AutoPharm software). All products were purchased from Talyst, who is headquartered in Bellevue, WA.

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Pharmacy could use the Palm Pre

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There is an interesting little article in this month’s issue of Hospital Pharmacy (not available online yet – volume 44(5), pp 429-430, May 2009) entitled “The Palm Pre: A Beginning of an Ending?” The author, Brent Fox, has been writing articles on Palm powered devices (PDAs) for several years. In the article he address the upcoming release of the new Palm Pre , a smartphone with slick new hardware and software that is supposed to compete with the iPhone and BlackBerry devices.

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