TELEMEDICINE and e-Health (July/August 2009): “Although as a “social entertainment†Twitter is remarkably successful—it’s a wonderful time-waster—the more significant question, especially as it pertains to telemedicine and e-health, is: What good is it? Joseph C. Kvedar, M.D., Director of the Center for connected Health (Partners Healthcare System, Boston, MA), says that one way to look at Twitter is as a method of mass communication. “It’s a bit like having a group of people you can instantly send a blast fax or blast e-mail or a blast communication to because it’s real-time and because it was designed for mobility. Instead of being like texting my daughter, I might now text 30 people or 50 or 100 people, whatever the number is who are following you.†Several healthcare practitioners and organizations are putting Twitter to use.†– I have to admit, I’ve made contact with more interesting and intelligent people in five months of “Tweeting” then in my previous 12 year career as a pharmacist. That’s certainly important to me.
Author: Jerry Fahrni
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First Impression – Dell Latitude XT2
I got my hands on another new tablet PC today. This time it was the Dell Latitude XT2. This is our hospitals convertible tablet of choice. I would have preferred the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet, but as I have mentioned many times before we are a Dell shop.The Dell Latitude XT2 is a very elegant looking tablet PC, but was a bugger to configure. The tablet didn’t want to stay connected to the hospitals wireless network. This is in sharp contrast to the Motion J3400 I mentioned earlier this week which grabbed onto our network right out of the box. The problem turned out to be the Latitude’s ControlPoint Connection Manger. I was able to find some information by searching Google after a disastrous call to the Dell customer service line. I had all the right credentials to access the mega-super-extra-special customer service rep, but that turned out to be worth about the same as a hand full of rocks. Anyway, I ended up uninstalling the ControlPoint Connection Manger and restarting Window’s connection manager via MMC. After that the tablet’s connection to the hospital network worked great, but the “Tablet Buttons†that allow the user to operate screen rotation in slate mode stopped working. More research led me to a software bundle called the ControlPoint System Manager. I installed that and the buttons started working, but I lost the digitizer. An additional 30 minutes of googling led me to the N-Trig software bundle, which finally got me up and running. I’m sure all this would have been much easier if the DVD that the customer support website kept referring to was actually in the box. I never did find it.
Now, on to the good stuff. The XT2 is a very nice machine. It is smaller then my Dell Latitude D520 by quite a bit (see photo). The J3400 is similar in size, but looks significantly bulkier. I prefer the look and feel of the XT2. The screen on the Dell is small (12.1â€), but very sharp and easy to read. Like the Motion tablet it is much faster then the tablet PCs the pharmacists are currently using.The tablet came with Windows XP pre-installed which is fine. The inking experience is very nice. The feature I like the most so far is the ability to navigate with either finger-tip-touch or the pen. I can quickly change back and forth by tapping the screen twice with my finger to activate the touch interface, or by tapping the screen twice with the pen to activate the pen interface. This little feature alone kept me entertained for quite a while. It made surfing the internet more of a treat then usual.
Based on the limited time I’ve had to spend with the tablet I have to say it’s a keeper. I actually like it quite a bit more then the Motion J3400. I’ll update you on how well it performed in the pharmacy after I’ve had a chance to put it through it paces. Until then, I have a new toy.
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US Army utilizing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to standardize methodology
InformationWeek: “The pilot program has already shown the way toward more consistency in environmental reporting and given the Army baseline data for forecasting, but Davis is looking for more, especially in the way of greenhouse gasses. “As we begin to understand and appreciate the benefits of this information technology, we can calculate our greenhouse gas emissions and ultimately our carbon boot print,” he said. “I want something we can audit later on, something that’s not just a back of an envelope calculation.” The Army’s choice of multi-tenant SaaS for its pilot is notable, as the military has been reluctant to use Web-based systems in other cases, especially with operational data such as on-installation emissions. “The reaction of some of our customers is, ‘Oh my gosh, on the Internet?’ ” John Garing, director of strategic planning at the Defense Information Systems Agency, said in an interview earlier this year.†– You know you’re behind the times when the US military is outpacing you in non-weapons related technology. Doh!
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When does medication safety become counterproductive?
Being a pharmacist I’m exposed to lots of procedural changes implemented in the name of patient safety. Tall man lettering, black box warnings, pop-up warnings for allergies, drug interactions, pregnancy indicators, lactation indicators, “high risk drugs listsâ€, shiny labels to identify sound-alike-look-alike-drugs (SALAD), separation of stock for similarly named medications, bar coding, double checking, triple checking, and so on and so forth ad infinitum. As the “IT Pharmacist†I get to see all these changes up close and personal because I’m often involved in their implementation in one way or another. Do we actually have any evidence to support using all these things?
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Infusion catheter delivers medication with precision
Vascular Designs’ IsoFlowâ„¢ infusion catheter … is a dual balloon catheter designed for controlled and selective infusion of physician-specified fluids into selected vasculature by means of temporary occlusion of a target region of the vessel with simultaneous perfusion of blood past the isolated region. With this type of directed approach to fluid delivery, you can increase drug concentrations at targeted sites while reducing systemic exposure, thereby improving efficacy and patient outcomes. This makes IsoFlow ideal for battling diseases such as cancer for which treatment requires the direct infusion of chemotherapy drugs to a targeted region of the body like a tumor.
The IsoFlow catheter enables sideways perfusion, The IsoFlow catheter enables sideways perfusion, which gives you the ability to push specified fluids both into side branch and angiogenicly formed vessels, letting medications reach an isolated area in a highly targeted and concentrated fashion. With IsoFlow’s unique design, fluids can reach areas that could not previously be treated directly.
How cool is that.
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Moving storage around in the “cloud”
ByteandSwitch:†One of the great theoretical advantages of cloud computing is the implied portability – users can move data in and among cloud resources easily, and the cloud itself may move data between and among resources without the customer being aware that anything has changed. In practice, cloud data can prove just as firmly rooted in physical location as any “traditional” data resource – but that could be changing with the rise of applications like NetApp’s new Data ONTAP 8 cloud storage system.†– The article goes on to say that the Data Motion system “allows data mobility with no downtime required for storage-subsystem expansion or scheduled maintenance,†That’s a nice thing to have as the ability to shuffle data around without affecting end users is important, but don’t you think it’s a little weird to talk about moving data from one cloud to another. I thought the whole point of the cloud environment was to eliminate the need for things like this. Anyone? -
Anthropomimetic robot is just a tad bit creepy
Eccerobot (Embodied Cognition in a Compliantly Engineered Robot) is an anthropomimetic robot developed by a consortium of labs in Europe. An antrhopomimetic robot imitates not just the human form, but human biological structures and functions as well. This gives the robot the potential for human-like movements and interactions.From the website: “The ECCEROBOT project is a spin-off of the CRONOS1 project conducted at the University of Essex. The goal of this project was to investigate machine consciousness through internal modelling. For this purpose the first anthropomimetic robot torso was built. Within the ECCEROBOT project we will further enhance this torso, develop a controller for it, and investigate the development of human-like cognitive abilities.â€
Reminds me a little of the “terminators†in Terminator movies. Like I said, creepy.
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First impression – Motion J3400 tablet PC
I received a new Motion J3400 tablet PC today from our IT department. It’s for our ICU pharmacists and will be replacing the Motion LE1700 tablet PC they are currently using. The tablet has the same application configuration as our desktop machines: Siemens Pharmacy, Soarian Clinicals, internet access, etc.
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“What’d I miss?” – Week of August 23rd
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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An infusion pump that can be used around MRI scanners…Cool!
The MRidium 3860+ from IRadimed is the first non-magnetic iv pump with integrated SpO2 monitoring designed specifically for use around MRI scanners. According to the manufacturer: “The new 3860+ offers significantly upgraded performance and features to the already proven MRidium MR IV pump product line. With the addition of a 10 key numeric input keypad and its wider pumping range of O.l mL/Hr to 1400 ml/Hr, the 3860+ series allows quick programming and broad fluid flow control. The drug library has been enhanced to allow user profiles to be stored and easily transferred via the SD memory card to other pumps. With the addition of the Masimo SET Sp02 monitoring and specialized fiber optic sensor, the 3860+ facilitates both safe sedation AND monitoring in one portable MR safe unit. Approved for use in 0.2 to 3 T Magnets. Features: Dose Rate Calculator, Bolus Dose Programming, Secondary Drug Delivery, Syringe Delivery, Adjustable Occlusion Pressure, KVO, SpO2 monitoring, and Alarm Settings, [and] CQI Data Ability w/Tracking Software which records up to 3000 Entries.†A couple of things that stand out, besides being able to use it around an MRI scanner, are the wide range of infusion rates and the ability to use standard 10 to 60 mL syringes with the MRidium Syringe Adapter IV Set (image shown). I’ve seen several pumps that limit users to 999 mL/hr, which can create an issue in certain circumstances. The ability to utilize syringes comes in handy for pediatrics; most pediatric infusions require an entirely different pump.Pharmacists aren’t typically interested in infusion pumps, but they catch my eye from time to time since my involvement with the Alaris Smart Pump project at our facility.
