“What’d I miss?” – Week of May 30, 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.

– Ai, Shrek Forever After remained #1 at the boxoffice last weekend with Sex in the City 2 coming in second. The Prince of Persia, the movie my family and I decided to see last weekend, was a close third. It was good.

– For anyone that really cares, the NBA finals started this week with the Lakers putting the hurt on the Celtics. I’m not a big fan of professional basketball, but at least it’s not baseball.

– The 2010 ASHP Summer Meeting is getting underway in Tampa. The meeting will officially run from June 6-9, but there’s already quite a bit going on. I was at the Summer Meeting last year in Chicago. It’s not nearly as big as Midyear, but it’s still worth the trip if you’re able to attend. I will be sitting this one out. To make sure you don’t miss anything important be sure to follow the action on Twitter by using #ashpsm10.

– Speaking of #ashpsm10, Brent Fox Tweeted this question earlier today: how many pharmacist are aware of “meaningful use”?. My answer is not many. Besides the pharmacists that are involved in informatics, the number that know anything about meaningful use is small. None of the pharmacists I work with know anything about it.

– There is a great article on “Fanboyism” at the You Are Not So Smart website. “On the other hand, if the product is unnecessary, like an iPad, there is a great chance the customer will become a fanboy because they had to choose to spend a big chunk of money on it. It’s the choosing one thing over another which leads to narratives about why you did it.” Yep, I couldn’t agree more.

– Speaking of the iPad, here’s a useful article on tips for Keynote presentations on the iPad. I’ve been looking at Keynote for the iPad as I’ve started to enjoy doing a few presentations over the past couple of months. My other big hurdle with the iPad is viewing Microsoft Office documents on the device. Fortunately Documents To Go is now available on the iPad. Sweet.

– Have you seen the video of surgeons in Japan using an iPad during surgery? If not just take a look at the video below. I don’t know whether to be amazed or appalled.

– Just in case you missed it, AT&T announced this week that they were doing away with their unlimited data plans. Just when I thought AT&T couldn’t do anything worse they turn around and make it difficult for future iPhone and iPad users to really enjoy the capability of those devices. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as long as AT&T is as pathetic as they are I will not use their service for any of my personal mobile needs. Yes I have an iPhone, but it is provided to me as an electronic leash by my hospital. My personal device of choice is the Motorola DROID running on the Verizon network.

– Lately I’ve been interested in rugged laptops and tablet PCs. The Gertac V100 definitely qualifies as the latter. The thing is pretty much indestructible. The only downside is the cost of this tough little dude, which starts at a cool $3500. Ouch!

– Yesterday I posted my thoughts on the Practice Fusion EMR. I noted a couple of concerns regarding lack of access on my mobile devices and lack of clinical checking with medications. Well, Dr. Glenn Laffel from Practice Fusion left a comment on my post letting me know that Practice Fusion will offer drug-drug and drug-allergy checking “shortly“. In addition Emily from Practice Fusion commented that Practice Fusion was “also working on a mobile strategy this year.” I guess you can scratch those concerns off my list.

– I’ve talked about using a hi-tech Bluetooth scanner with the iPad before. Well how about a low-tech scanner. Here’s an interesting setup that does the same thing as the hi-tech scanner, but costs a whole lot less. The solution consists of an iPad, a CueCat USB scanner and a camera connection kit. Pretty nifty, huh?

– CMIO: “A password-protected laptop computer containing information about 61,027 Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center patients from multiple states and several foreign countries has been stolen.” How many time do I need to say this: never, ever store patient information on a laptop or any other form of portable storage solution. Mobile devices should only be used to gain access to centrally housed, secure cloud repositories. Enough said.

– A couple of articles you might find interesting:

CPOE system design aspects and their qualitative effect on usability. Stud Health Technol Inform. 2008;136:309-14

This article looks at the configuration of alerts in a CPOE system and how poorly designed implementation strategies can leave a bad taste in the mouth of those using the system. “Published studies reported that alerts which show up too early or too late in the workflow of CPOE users ordering medication can lead to errors from which users cannot recover.” It’s not only about how robust the clinical decision support is, but how it’s strategically integrated into the system as well.

Example of a Human Factors Engineering approach to a medication administration work system: potential impact on patient safety. Int J Med Inform. 2010 Apr;79(4):e43-57. Epub 2009 Sep 8.

This article gives a very interesting overview of Human Factors Engineering (HFE) and how it was applied in the face of CPOE. Interesting stuff.

– GottaBeMobile: “The Dell Streak is going on sale this weekend in Europe and will be available in the U.S. starting next month direct from Dell for $499.” I am actually excited to see this device up close and personal. Check out the gorilla glass demonstration over at Engadget. Like I said before, anything that has the descriptor “gorilla” in it has to be cool.

– The HTC EVO has been getting a lot of press this week. What a great looking Android device. A couple of long time Apple fanboys (Scoble and Gray) have given the EVO serious consideration this week, which I find encouraging. It will be interesting to see what Apple has up its sleeve with the next iPhone release rumored to be hitting the streets next month.  I have been impressed with my DROID over the past several months and believe that the Android operating system is still very immature. I can’t wait to see what it has to offer over the next several months. I’ll be looking for a new smartphone sometime before Christmas and think the timing should be right for something new and exciting.  Unfortunately my hopes of purchasing the Notion Ink Adam Adroid tablet sometime this summer went up in flames with the announcement that the device will be delayed until November. Booooooo!

– I use WordPress to write and manage this blog. It offers an incredible array of tools that makes it easy to use and more robust than anything else I’ve toyed with. One of the things that makes WordPress so interesting is the number of plugins that allow you to do anything from collect stats to autopost to the social media of choice. Socialmediatoday has a nice list of the “18 Must Have WordPress Plugins for Your Blog.” I even use a few of them.

Have a great weekend everyone.