This is my final post of 2012. Random thoughts about things that I’ve seen, heard and/or read over the past twelve months.
Twenty-twelve was an interesting year for the Fahrni clan, and not in a good way. We lost one of our own and had some bad things happen. We also had some good times, but it won’t be a year that I’ll miss all that much.
We all survived the Mayan Apocalypse
We experienced the last repeating date of the century: 12-12-12
I came across the Diana Hazardous Drug Compounding System from icumedical while doing a little internet surfing the other day. As the name implies it’s a small, closed-looped system designed for compounding hazardous medications, i.e. chemotherapy. The “Diana System†utilizes a dual channel system, one for small volume and another for larger volumes. It’s a little … Read more
I am the proud owner of a brand new Samsung Chromebook that my wife so generously left for me under the Christmas tree. Clearly I’m a lucky man, for more than one reason. There’s no shortage of Chromebook reviews on the internet, and you’re likely to get more out of them than you will by … Read more
There are basically four IV room workflow management systems that I’m aware of: DoseEdge by Baxa, Pharm-Q In The Hood by Envision Telepharmacy, SP Central Telepharmacy System by ScriptPro and Phocus Rx by Grifols. Here’s a little table I’ve put together comparing them based on what I know. Product DoseEdge Pharm-Q In The Hood SP … Read more
So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….
The coffee mug to the right comes from Jason DeVillains, better known to many as The Cynical Pharmacist. Jason and I met via Twitter(@TheCynicalRPH) and have been chitchatting via the web ever since. This Christmas themed mug is one of four that he sent me a few weeks ago. And what do you know; it just so happens to be the perfect occasion to bust out a Christmas mug. Boo-ya! Â Jason also blogs over at The Cynical Pharmacist. Check it out.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was #1 at the box office last weekend. No surprise there. It did a respectable $85 Million, which is a record for weekend openings in December besting the previous record holder, I Am Legend’s $77 Million. My family and I contributed to the Hobbit’s box office success by going to see it last Sunday. Was it good? Yes, of course. Was it great? No, I don’t think it was. It was visual appealing, and never boring, but it was hard for me to wrap my brain around the idea of a trilogy of movies based on the book. I definitely recommend you see it on the big screen.
A link to the video below was left in the comment section of my recent ASHP Midyear 2012 post. The video features a SencorpWhite RFID MiniVert Carousel. Pretty cool use of RFID technology. Where would something like this fit in a pharmacy? Not really sure, but I can think of a few use cases that … Read more
Here’s an interesting infographic from Livescribe that covers how users take notes with or without tablets.
Couple of things I find particularly interesting:
(infographic reproduced below with permission)
So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….
The coffee mug to the right comes from Pike Place Market in Seattle, WA, home of the first Starbucks Store. I got the mug on my first trip to Seattle, which just so happened to be during a trip to give a presentation for the company I currently work for. I wasn’t an employee at the time, but they invited me up to talk about the automation and technology that we were using in our pharmacy at Kaweah Delta Medical Center where I was employed as an “IT Pharmacist”. One of the things I really wanted to do during my visit there was visit Pike Place Market and see the first Starbucks. My brother, Robert used to work in Seattle and he gave me a list of things to do and see. I only managed to get  to a few of things on the list, but this was one of them. The first Starbucks is different from any other Starbucks I’ve ever been to. It doesn’t have that corporate-lets-make-money feel to it.
Here’s an interesting twist at the box office, Skyfall continues to do well as it rose back to the#1 spot last weekend. Good movie, highly recommended. Rise of the Guardians came in at #2.  This of course will be short lived as The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will kill at the box office this weekend. There is no doubt that I will see The Hobbit, but I must say that the reviews have not been flattering. I read the book as a child and again as an adult.
A colleague wished me a happy two year anniversary the other day. Apparently LinkedIn tracks that kind of stuff. I knew it had been about two years since leaving pharmacy practice and becoming a product manager, but I hadn’t really given it a whole lot of thought until now.
So, two years. What’s that mean? Not much really, especially if you buy into the theory outlined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers. According to Gladwell it takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to truly master a skill, any skill. Given that I’ve been a product manager for two years, and assuming that an average year is about 2,000 hours of work, which we know is laughable, then I’ve barely scratched the surface.
Augmented reality has been a standard of science fiction for decades, but now it’s a reality. We all remember the Starbucks app that made the Red Holiday Cup come to life last year, right? If not here’s a video on YouTube. Of course that’s just the tip of the iceberg as Google and Microsoft have both started playing with the concept; Google with Project Glass and Microsoft by filing a patient with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for “event augmentation with real-time information†last year. Google’s Project Glass was even named one of 2012’s best inventions by TIME.
Setting aside the marketing hype for such things for a minute consider the practical uses in pharmacy practice for something like Google’s Project Glass. Imagine two similar, but distinctly different scenarios: