“What’d I miss?” – Week of December 13th

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.

– The Princess and The Frog was #1 at the box office last weekend. I’m really looking forward to Avatar this weekend.

– I spent most of last week at ASHP Midyear in Las Vegas, NV. Prior to Midyear several pharmacists got together and decided to try using Google Wave as a way of making the conference a bit more interesting and informative. Unfortunately the experiment failed. Several things could have contributed to the failure, but I think the most prominent were lack of interest in Wave and the complete absence of wireless connectivity at Midyear; maybe next year.

– A company called Fraunhofer has developed a video teleconferencing system for medical applications. “In collaboration with the Protestant Hospital in the town of Witten, researchers at the ISST have now developed a software program that makes coordination both simple and cost-effective. “Our software is designed to be modular – you start with the basic core services and simply add the specialist individual services you need in each case,” Koch explains. For basic program functions such as barcode recognition, the scientists have chosen existing open-source solutions. To tailor these to a specific application, the programmer simply modifies certain parameters.”

– EHR Bloggers: “Efforts by informatics organizations to “computerize the human studyome” will help systematize the evolution of clinical recommendations based on medical evidence. From this, various clinical and scientific bodies can create an increasingly-robust set of clinical guidelines, recognizing that not all clinical questions have a single answer. But how can that be presented to rank-and-file physicians? Clinical Decision Support is a feature of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), where information embedded in the patient’s EHR can alert physicians to optimal medications, current recommendations, or the need for certain tests. “ – The article discusses the difficulty in keeping up with the extreme amount of information being thrown at clinicians today and offers up a couple of useful solutions for letting technology help.

– JAMIA 2010; 17:78-84: “The impact of computerized provider order entry on medication errors in a multispecialty group practice – Conclusion: A basic CPOE system in a community setting was associated with a significant reduction in medication errors of most types and severity levels.” – The article looks at approximately 10,000 prescriptions, half handwritten and half electronic, and compares the number of errors for each type. While informative and potentially valuable, the study is pretty liberal with their definition of an error. Errors included inappropriate abbreviations and orders with incomplete information.

– Laika’s MedLibLog presents a very nice summary of this article on why people may be responding differently to the H1N1 virus. Take a moment to read it if you can, it is interesting stuff.

– Are you a BlackBerry addict? Well, there is a BlackBerry application called “I Love BlackBerry” from EarlySail that will “ show your usage during work hours and during nights and weekends. It organizes your daily, weekly, monthly usage for the current month as well as displays long term averages.” Don’t be surprised how much time you’re spending on your CrackBerry.

– Below is a video of what the future holds for magazines and e-readers. I am so looking forward to this.

– From the “what-was-your-first-clue” category, Healthcare IT News is reporting that “The adoption of healthcare IT and its use to reduce costs are among the top 10 healthcare trends to expect in 2010, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.” Do they really pay people to come up with this stuff?

– There’s a great post at Massachusetts Medical Law Report on Social networking 101 for physicians. The article gives some great times for any healthcare provider using social media.

– 9 to 5 Mac has a short list of some of the biggest remaining iTunes hold-outs. On the list is one of my favorite bands of all time, AC/DC.

– My daughters Christmas present finally arrived from Barnes & Noble via UPS last night. I was starting to worry as the original delivery date for my order was pushed back a couple of times. Oh by the way, it’s a Nook. Don’t worry, my website isn’t cool enough for her to read so there’s no chace of her finding out about it before Christmas. I’ve had a little time to play with it (hey, it’s my job to make sure it’s working properly) and I have to say it’s a great little device. I’ll let you know how it goes after a couple of months of heavy use by my daughter.

– The Entourage Edge is a very exciting hybrid device with dual-display, 9.7-inch E Ink and 10-inch LCD, and built-in WiFi. I’m looking forward to its release scheduled for some time in the first quarter of 2010. Check out the video below.

– Evernote for Android is finally available. I’m a user and proponent of Evernote and have been waiting for this since I purchased my Droid. TechCrunch has some nice screen shots.

– Just a quick reminder that many of my blogs will now be cross posted to RxInformatics.

Have a great weekend everyone.