“What’d I miss?” – Week of March 7, 2010

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.

– Alice In Wonderland was #1 at the box office last weekend. No surprise.

– Edge.org: “Gelernter writes: The Internet is no topic like cellphones or videogame platforms or artificial intelligence; it’s a topic like education. It’s that big. Therefore beware: to become a teacher, master some topic you can teach; don’t go to Education School and master nothing. To work on the Internet, master some part of the Internet: engineering, software, computer science, communication theory; economics or business; literature or design. Don’t go to Internet School and master nothing. There are brilliant, admirable people at Internet institutes. But if these institutes have the same effect on the Internet that education schools have had on education, they will be a disaster.” – This is a great article on the paradigm shift in internet usage and the need for everyone to adjust or get left behind. Maybe Google’s John Herlihy was right when he said the desktop will disappear in the next few years.

– Are the Cleveland Clinic and Microsoft the same person? It seems like every time I open my browser there’s another article about the Cleveland Clinic and Microsoft partnering on some new project. Case in point, a recent article at HealthImaging talks about a collaborative project involving Cleveland Clinic’s EMR system paired with Microsoft’s online HealthVault. “The project found a “significant change” in the average number of days between physician office visits for patients. Diabetic and hypertensive patients were able to make doctor’s office visits less often, increasing the number of days between appointments by 71 percent and 26 percent respectively, indicating that patients had better control of their conditions, according to the researchers.” Interesting.

– There’s a new boxed warning for clopidogrel.

MACE rates by PPI for clopidogrel

MACE = major adverse cardiac events

 The tablet to the left is from an article at theheart.org

 

– Here’s a great website if you want to know more about HL7. Thanks to @carlacorkern for the link.

– By way of Harvard Business Review “The hard part is in the doing, in taking the requisite steps to translate an idea that looks great on paper into profits.” – I couldn’t agree more. As I mentioned in my BCMA post earlier this week “be aggressive with your implementation timeline. Do what you can and implement. You’ll learn more during the first 3 months after implementation then you could ever learn by sitting around a table talking about what could go wrong.”

– It appears that SaaS was popular at HIMSS10 last week. Practice Fusion has a post on what makes SaaS a hot topic and Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet Healthcare talks a little about why SaaS will help small medical practices. Hey, he even mentions Practice Fusion.

– I spent some time at Community Hospital of Monterey Peninsula (CHOMP) today getting the skinny on Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE). Not only does CHOMP have a beautiful facility, they have some great technology in place. I was impressed with their software and infrastructure setup, but they wouldn’t let me tour the pharmacy; weird. The information was well worth the trip. Now to put the information to good use.

– Google has partnered with Dish Network to trial a TV show search service. Apparently the service will allow one to search the contents of shows from the Dish Network and services like YouTube. That is pretty cool. Thanks to @toddeury for the link.

– Here’s an book you might find interesting: Computational Technology for Effective Heath Care: Immediate Steps and Strategic Directions.

– Interested in cloud security and privacy? Then here’s a video for you. The webcast is presented by the authors of the book, “Cloud Security and Privacy.” The webcast covers many topics including infrastructure and data security, identity management, security management, privacy considerations, audit and compliance, cloud based security services. You can read more about it at cloudbook.

– Very interesting read at A Fauve in the Blog Space about the perceived difficulties associated with building a centralized EHR. “Furthermore the extant health-specific technologies prevalent in the industry for this sort of solution drive towards complex and hard to implement solutions. “A centralised care record service based on SOA and HL7 and CDA documents and IHE profiles and Snomed and, and, and….?” We might need a few years to work out how to integrate with that!” I wonder whether the centralised care record may not actually be an anti-pattern, and a costly one at that.” – Well, with an attitude like that it’ll never happen.

– The iPad is now available for pre-order. I’ve always found “pre-order” to be an interesting word. Either you’re ordering it or you’re not.

- Speaking of the iPad, according to Matt Legend Gemmell “It’s not just a big iPhone. The iPad may be a larger version of the iPhone in terms of the hardware and operating system, but treating it as the same device would be foolish.” I don’t know, it sure looks like a big iPhone to me. I’ll reserve my final judgment until I’ve used one.

– And for those of you that aren’t interested in the iPad you should take a look at Seven alternatives to the Apple iPad at CrunchGear. From the list I ‘m kind of fond of the Viliv S10 Blade and the Notion Ink Adam.

– I’ve mentioned the Improv Boogie Board a few times before, but haven’t been able to purchase one because they’re always out of stock. Anyway, one of the blogs I follow, CartoonMonkey, got ahold of one and did a little review. I’m jealous.

– Check out the cool protective skins for laptops, iPods, iPhones and Blackberry devices by GelaSkins. The art work is incredible. I’m diggin’ the MARVEL section myself, especially the Iron Man and War Machine skin.

– On The Wards: “The Mayo Clinic recently launched their first free iPhone application: Symptom Checker. Geared toward consumers, the app collects adult or child symptoms from the end-user and provides information about self-care at home or guidance on when to seek additional care. In the Clinic’s lingo, the app provides practical “action-oriented” information to consumers.” – Symptom Chekcer iTunes link here.

– medGadget: “Scientists from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Tufts University have developed an approach of integrating single crystalline silicon electronics, made out of nanomembranes, into silk that is both biocompatible and absorbable by the body. This can lead to the introduction of monitors and therapeutic devices into spaces where traditional electronics cannot function safely.”- Cool, silk biomonitors.

– Top 10 searchpharases that brought people to my site this week: 1) ipod pharmacists, 2) capsule machine, 3) cloud computing cartoon, 4) itouch for pharmacists, 5) alaris smart pump, 6) alaris pump, 7) different kind of iv pumps, 8) cloud, 9) frustration cartoon, 10) notion ink.

Have a great weekend everyone.