Jerry Fahrni

Author: Jerry Fahrni

  • One week with the Motorola Droid

    I have been carrying the Motorola Droid from Verizon around for a little over a week now, and while I haven’t learned all the ins and outs of the phone, I have certainly used it long enough to form an opinion.
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  • Cool Technology for Pharmacy

    There’s a running joke among pharmacists that we have medication to treat just about everything. It’s kind of like Apples “There’s an app for that”, i.e. “There’s a pill for that”. Well, we’re getting closer to making that statement a reality. The SmartPill is a diagnostic device in the shape of a giant capsule. It is taken by the patient and wirelessly transmits data to the physician as it journeys through the patient’s small and large bowel.
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  • Pharmacist perception of Wikipedia as a drug information resource

    homer-simpson-dohThe Annals of Pharmacotherpy (Vol. 43, No. 11, pp. 1912-1913): “Approximately 80% of pharmacists use the Internet to obtain drug information.1 Wikipedia, often found at the top of Internet search results, is a free-access, collaborative, online encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone.2 Incidents of vandalism have occurred, since the site allows anyone to contribute. For example, an incident occurred in which a fake biography was created as a joke to implicate prominent writer and journalist John Seigenthaler for the assassination of John F Kennedy. It took about 4 months until the fake biography was detected and deleted by Wikipedia.3 Although Wikipedia does have an internal quality review, the ability of internal editors to find and correct erroneous information may not be timely. As reported by Clauson et al.,4 the information found on Wikipedia may not be complete and accurate, especially in regard to drug information. Published data regarding pharmacists’ use of Wikipedia to obtain drug information is lacking. Therefore, the objective of this study was to measure pharmacists’ use and perception of Wikipedia for obtaining drug information.” – This letter to the editor discusses the results of a questionnaire given to pharmacists regarding the use of Wikipedia for drug information. I was disturbed to read that 28% of respondents reported using Wikipedia for drug information. Strange that it doesn’t appear on any of my drug information resources lists, and never will. I expect better from pharmacists.

  • Dealing with the shortcomings of healthcare information systems

    This week has kept me busy dealing with issues surrounding our various clinical systems and how they fit, or don’t fit, into various processes. If you’ve been reading this blog then you are probably a little too familiar with one of the problems; the dreaded allergy issues which I’ve discussed here and here. The issue runs much deeper then I’m willing to go into here, but suffice it to say that it’s been a real pain in the rear. The other significant issue has to do with bar code medication administration and “things we can’t do” with our current system.

    Anyway, I’ve been in meeting after meeting this week listening to people argue over things that I consider outside of our control and basically spending a lot of time talking about what our systems can’t do. As you can imagine the discussions can become quite energetic. During one particularly heated discussion I asked a key player to forget about what we couldn’t change and asked them to focus on the issues that could be controlled. The end result was a general consensus that we could control and correct approximately 60% of the problem by working within the confines of the systems and deal with the remaining 40% through education and accountability. The arguing took 60 minutes, the ultimate solution took 15.

    Believe me, I am painfully aware of the shortcomings of our various clinical systems, but I really don’t see the need to dwell on things that are outside of my control; a lesson I learned from my wife. Oh sure, I get frustrated and vent every now and then, but the bottom line is that I have to work within the limitations of the systems put in front of me.  You see engineers do it all the time; focus on how to make it better not on what can’t be done. I think healthcare professionals could learn a lot from engineers. Just a thought.

  • Get a diagnosis by coughing into your mobile phone?

    Telegraph.co.uk:  “Software being developed by American and Australian scientists will hopefully allow patients simply to cough into their phone, and it will tell them whether they have cold, flu, pneumonia or other respiratory diseases. Whether a cough is dry or wet, or “productive” or “non-productive” (referring to the presence of mucus on the lungs), can give a doctor information about what is causing that cough, for example whether it is caused by a bacterial or a viral infection.” – I don’t know about you, but I’m a little skeptical about this one.

    I find it interesting that the photo on the Telegraph site is of an iPhone, while the original article at DiscoveryNews shows a completely different device. Amazing how the media injects the iPhone into everything to increase interest.

    Read the press release from STAR Analytical Services here (PDF).

  • How about a self-sanitizing keyboard?

    Everyone that works in a hospital knows how nasty computer keyboards can get. Well check out the Viogurad Self-Sanitizing keyboard.

    From the Vioguard site:

    The Vioguard keyboard is stored in a mechanized enclosure (which doubles as a monitor stand) when not in use. It safely floods the keyboard and track pad with germicidal ultraviolet light. When a user sits down at the workstation and activates the infrared motion sensor with the wave of a hand, the keyboard automatically extends into working  position. When the user is finished, the keyboard automatically retracts back inside the enclosure and activates the germicidal ultraviolet lights. LED indicators are used to let the user know when the keyboard has been sanitized and is ready for use. The sanitization cycle can be interrupted anytime to ensure the keyboard is available as needed.

    vioguard_keyboard

  • “What’d I miss?” – Week of November 5th

    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.
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  • Cool Technology for Pharmacy

    While not specifically related to pharmacy, this is very interesting. Stephen S. Hau, the founder of PatientKeeper in the 90’s, has created a new product called Shareable Ink. The product uses a digital pen on paper forms to capture handwriting. The information is transferred, via wireless connection, to a server where the information is digitized. The technology is not new per se, but the application to medicine in this way is.
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  • Comments and discussion regarding allergy post

    My post from yesterday about allergies spurred some great comments on Twitter from @omowizard and @psweetman. I read the discussion between @omowizard and @psweetman with great interest and wish I would have been awake to participate. Unfortunately I was already counting sheep when the conversation took place. The discussion also made me realize how difficult it is to carry on a serious conversation with the 140 character limit imposed by Twitter. What we need is a place where a conversation can extend beyond the 140 character limit. Oh, wait, we have that; friendfeed. I digress.
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  • Who should collect allergy information and how should it be done?

    pulling out hairA pharmacists review of a patient medication regimen is never complete without a thorough evaluation of the patients allergy history. Unfortunately our hospital information system suffers from the inability to prevent people from being human and making mistakes. Our clinical information system permits ‘free texting’ of allergy information, resulting in misspelled drug names and therefore allergies that aren’t electronically checked against medication orders. You know the old saying: garbage in, garbage out.
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