Stanford University Medical Center Pharmacy site visit [07 31 2013]

I just rolled in the door from Palo Alto, where I spent most of the morning visiting the Stanford University Medical Center inpatient pharmacy. And why not, I didn’t have anything else to do today. I picked up the phone, connected with the Director of Pharmacy, Mike Brown and was on my way. First and … Read more

Swisslogs introduces next-gen RoboCurrier Autonomous Mobile Robot

Swisslog has been making these little robots for a long time, although I don’t see many of them in the wild these days.

They’re pretty cool in their own right. The robots themselves are reasonably small. The previous version was only 35-inches tall, and weighed in around 100 pounds. But they could carry up to 50 pounds worth of cargo and could navigate around the hospital completely on autopilot. I’m not entirely sure, but I believe they use RFID technology to navigate.

[Update 08 01 2013]: According to Swisslog the RoboCurrier “utilizes an obstacle avoidance system and mapping software that’s set up during installation“.

One of the coolest features though is use of a prerecorded message to announce its arrival.

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Saturday morning coffee [July 27 2013]

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….

It’s been a while. I feel a bit rusty.

The coffee mug below is from the ASHP Summer Meeting Twitter contest in Minneapolis, MN in June. I took third place, which is a bit of a disappointing as I was the reigning champ for a couple of years back in the day. I’ve had the mug for a few weeks, but haven’t felt like posting so it’s just been sitting in my cupboard. Thanks to ASHP, I’m certainly happy to add it to my ever growing collection.

ASHP SM 2013 Twitter Contest Mug

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Medication adherence, it should begin and end with a pharmacist

There’s no question that medication adherence is a problem. How big a problem? Well, according to an article in The American Journal of Medicine, 28% of new prescriptions never get filled, and among patients who do fill their prescriptions, adherence rates are less than 50%. The problem with these numbers is that they represent not only grief for the patient, but for the entire healthcare system.

According to Dave Walker, a pharmacist that blogs at pharmacy 2.0 and ½, “although the causes and proposed solutions to the medication adherence/compliance problem vary widely and are often debated, it seems one thing can be agreed upon by all… it is a very costly healthcare problem in the U.S. today. The cost of non-adherence was estimated to be $290 billion annually by the New England Healthcare Institute NEHI in 2009. It’s now estimated by some to be in the neighborhood of $330 billion or more annually.” That’s a lot of money.

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Fresh application of older healthcare technology

I came across an interesting article in the July issue of Pharmacy Practice News. The article describes some of the posters presented at the 2013 ASHP Summer Meeting in Minneapolis. The technology covered is relatively old, and a little antiquated when you look at much of the technology floating around the world these days. Nonetheless, this technology still represents opportunity in healthcare.

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