Jerry Fahrni

Author: Jerry Fahrni

  • Cool Technology for Pharmacy

    medminder_mayaMaya from MedMinder looks like and ordinary medication organizer with 28 separate compartments representing a week’s supply of medication (7 columns = 7 days/week x 4 rows = AM/Noon/PM/HS). The device uses wireless technology to update MedMinder’s central database with the patient’s medication activity. Patients and caregivers can access this information via the web or receive emails and text messages with reminders and reports.
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  • Yes, another article on Twitter and healthcare

    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.

  • First Impression – Dell Latitude XT2

    dell-latitude-xt2I 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.

    IMG_0583Now, 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 (12.1”), 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.

  • 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!

  • 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 lists”, 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

    VascularDesigns:

    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”

    black_cloudByteandSwitch:” 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

    ecerobotEccerobot (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.”

    Reminds me a little of the “terminators” in Terminator movies. Like I said, creepy.

  • 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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