“What’d I miss?” – Week of January 17th

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.

– Avatar continues to rake in the money as it remained in the top spot at the box office again last weekend. It has quickly risen to #3 on the list of top grossing movies of all time. Cool.

– CCHIT plans to reopen testing against the initial Set of Standards, Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria for Electronic Health Record Technology. Testing will reopen by February 12, 2010. More information is available here.

– LG has created the world’s largest flexible ePaper display. It’s 19” wide and it’s pretty slick. I wonder how I can get my hands on a couple of sheets. Hmm….

– GIGAOM: “Who Exactly Owns Your Data in the Cloud? – Between Gmail, Google Docs, Zoho, Facebook, Basecamp, Flickr, Twitter and countless other applications, much of our data now sits in the cloud. But few people ever stop to think about where that data is stored or how it might be accessed or used. So who exactly does own your data and who has access to it? And how much privacy can you expect?” – The post raises some interesting questions that I don’t think have any easy answers.

– besttabletreview: “There’s a lot of potential in tablets — no one can deny that. The main debate is if any company will be able to unlock that potential and offer it to consumers at a reasonable cost. A lot of people think that will happen next week when the Apple Tablet or iPad or iSlate or iDontCareWhatItsCalledIWillBuyItRegardless is announced. While we’re not convinced of that, Apple will certainly provide the kick in the pants to validate tablets and boost them into the mainstream.” – I think this is a fair statement. Look what the iPhone did for the smartphone industry.

– The WSJ has an article about Apple just in time for the speculated release of their new tablet.

– 9to5Mac: “Today, I was presented with two simulations of what Apple’s futuristic OS could look like working with medical and engineering applications. The simulations were done on an iMac and I think that you’ll find them to be absolutely fascinating. As long as you know that they’re simulations and not secret tests that I’ve discovered.” – The video below shows some pretty wicked-cool stuff. There is more information and an additional video at the 9to5Mac site.

– A colleague of mine told me last year that “if you only attend one technology conference next year, make it HIMSS.” That was my plan until I was informed late last week that my trip was canceled secondary to budget cuts at the hospital. HIMSS10 will be held in Atlanta at the Georgia World Congress Center March 1-4. The Pharmacy IT Symposium will be held on Sunday, February 28. Perhaps I’ll see you there next year.

– Healthcare Informatics: “In addition to kiosks, tablets are another touch-screen device that patients can use independently. At Adventist, Snyder is using them as a kiosk alternative that can also take credit card swipes and can be used anywhere in the hospital. “You can push the same content to the tablet or the kiosk,” says Snyder. At Adventist, patients waiting for morning surgeries are handed tablets in the waiting room. “If there is a co-pay due, we process that, and it allows one registration clerk to handle four or five patients at a time,” he says. “We’ve been an early adopter as to how much we’ve leveraged this in our revenue cycle.” – Interesting use of tablet PCs don’t you think?

– I’ve developed a bit of an interest in telemedicine in the past couple of weeks. Here are a few links I found helpful: Telemedicine and Telehealth Articles, an Introduction to Telehealth at Digital Telehealth incorporated, and a TeleHealth stream at the Healthcare Informatics Forum. The concept of Telehealth has much broader application than I once thought. This could be a very interesting and dynamic field in the very near future.

– A friend of mine, @poikonen, recently turned me on to using Posterous (http://posterous.com/). The same friend pointed me to an interesting article on Posterous vs. Tumblr, both popular mini-blogging services. The article is very thorough and interesting.

– Thanks to @carlacorkern for Tweeting a link to ASHP’s Pharmaicsts’ Letter on Stability of Refrigerated and Frozen Drugs. References like this are a good thing to keep tucked away just in case.  Here’s another handy references for Light-Sensitive Oral Prescription Drugs from the December issue of Hospital Pharmacy. You always seem to need references like these at the worst possible moment, and you can never find them; murphy’s law.

– Speaking of Hospital Pharmacy, the journal can no longer be found at the Facts & Comparisons website. The journal now resides with Thomas Land.

– Earlier this week I tweeted that I was thinking about going back to school and asked for recommendations on what field to pursue. Out of the entire Twitter universe I only received three responses: one to get an MBA, one to pursue software engineering and one person thought I should become a belly dancer. Hmm, I wonder what I would look like in a belly dancing outfit. On second thought don’t, that image could cause someone irreparable harm.

– I do a little per diem work at Children’s Hospital Central California (CHCC) in Madera, CA a couple of days a month. It helps me keep my pediatric pharmacist skills current. One thing odd about the place is the inability to connect to the outside world while inside the hospital; no 3G, no cell signal, no wireless, etc. In addition, the hospital IT department has the internet locked down so tight that you can’t do anything online. I worked at CHCC yesterday and felt very isolated from the rest of the world for the 11 hours I was there. It was strange, but I felt relieved whey my DROID went crazy with all my new Tweets, emails, and text messages when I was about half-way to my truck in the parking lot. Weird.

– GottaBeMobile has been hammering Dell about the Dell Latitude XT and N-Trig drivers. I use a Dell Latitude XT2 and have a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate sitting at home on my shelf, but haven’t installed it because of what I’ve been reading at GottaBeMobile. I haven’t been impressed with the XT2 and am already looking for a replacement.

– Evernote has a new release for Windows.

– mobihealthnews has an interesting read on the use of technology and medication adherence.

– PEPID is now available for the Palm Pre.

– Engadget: “While we can’t say for sure that videogames, as your grandmother insists, do indeed rot your brain, thanks to research conducted at a variety of Universities around the States we know that better gamers tend to have more gray matter than others — at least in certain areas.” – Very interesting.

– The NFL Title Games are this weekend. I went 2-2 last weekend, bringing my playoff record to a respectable 4-2 overall. One of my loses last week was handed to me by way of the Saints kicking the crud out of my Cardinals. Oh well, there’s always next year. My picks for this weekend are: Vikings and Colts to win.

Have a great weekend everyone.