Author: Jerry Fahrni

  • Needle-free injection system

    The Engineer:

    The Pyrofast system uses a fine, high-pressure jet stream to penetrate the skin and deliver liquid or solid drugs to the tissue beneath. According to the German company, the entire process takes 40m/s and creates a puncture that is four times smaller than that caused by conventional needle injections.

    pyrofastDr Thorsten Rudolph, managing director of Anwendungszentrum Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO), is working with IP management company, Patev to commercialise the technology. He claims that the system will prevent the transmission of blood-borne diseases via needlestick and sharp injuries and provide a more attractive option to patients generally.

    ‘The pyrotechnical gas propulsion technology that is used doesn’t cause bleeding, so the transfer of diseases such as HIV will be eliminated,’ he said. ‘This is the same chemical gas technology being used in airbags to provide a fast and reliable pressure profile. Including it in an injection system means that it can easily be used by patients to self administer drugs through the skin.’

    Most needle-free injection systems produce the initial penetration pressure using a spring or compressed gas. This can cause discomfort to the patient as the pressure applied is not uniform. Patev claims that the system overcomes this by using chemical substances that, after activation, generate a gas to create a constant and reliable pressure profile.

    The system also has the advantage of distributing the drugs to a wider area under the skin and therefore speeding up absorption, whereas needle injections cause a bolus that slows drug delivery.

    The team has developed a prototype and Rudolph is confident of working with industrial partners to begin trials in the near future.

    You can read more about it here.

  • Cool Technology for Pharmacy

    This really has nothing to do with pharmacy, but the technology is just too cool to pass up.

    I recently attended my youngest daughter’s back-to-school night. One of the instructors at the school used a 600 series SMART Board to give her presentation. Much of what she had to say never registered because I was too busy looking at the SMART Board.
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  • View on technology-enabled practice from ASHP

    The September issue of the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy contains a vision statement written by the ASHP Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology. The statement represents their thoughts on the current state of pharmacy practice and contains a healthy dose of ideas on how technology can help support and improve pharmacy practice.
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  • A great argument for being allowed to browse however you want

    Slate.com: “The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies’ success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity—they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway.” – I couldn’t have said it better myself. I know my brother would endorse the sentiment as well.

  • Is bar code scanning really safer for pharmacy?

    This is a great questions and one that I previously would have said is a no-brainer. I believe a bar coding system for medication dispensing from the pharmacy is an improvement in patient safety, but I would be hard pressed to prove it. A colleague of mine (John Poikonen at RxInformatics.com) is fond of saying that there is no evidence to support the use of bar coding. Here’s a quote from John: “The pharmacy profession is drunk with the notion that BCMA works for patient safety, in the face of little to no evidence.“ He has a point.
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  • What do you think of touchscreen technology for healthcare?

    Xavier Lanier over at GottaBeMobile.com asks the question “would [users] pay extra to have touch capabilities on their notebooks? Keep in mind, we’re not talking slates, convertibles, UMPC, netbook or MID form factors here- just plain old 12″ to 17″ clamshell notebooks.” It’s no secret that I am a big fan of touchscreen technology, but I don’t think I would be willing to pay extra for a touchscreen on a notebook. Tapping the screen on a notebook seems like it would be a little awkward. However, a touchscreen on a convertible notebook would be a completely different story. I would be willing to shell out a little extra cash for that combination.
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  • Verbal orders won’t necessarily go away after CPOE implementation

    AMN Healthcare: “A new AHRQ-funded study found that of roughly 973,000 orders that physicians at a large, Midwestern hospital gave nurses over a 12-month period, roughly 20 percent were verbal orders. The hospital transitioned from a paper-based to computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system during the study period. The new study is one of the first to examine how the content of verbal orders or the context in which they are given might increase risk of error. Although more hospitals are converting totally or in part to CPOE, most experts expect verbal medical ordering to continue to be used extensively for the foreseeable future. According to the researchers, who were led by the University of Missouri’s Douglas S. Wakefield, Ph.D., five factors potentially contribute to verbal orders causing medical errors—type of care setting; time of day or week; type of communication and related variables, such as the physician’s and/or nurse’s accent and articulation; the providers’ knowledge of the patients for whom the order is being given and previous contact experience between the physician and nurse; and environment including background noise and staffing levels. The study, “An Exploratory Study Measuring Verbal Order Content and Context,” was published in the April 2009 issue of Quality and Safety in Health Care.” “– There really are very few excuses for giving verbal orders in a facility that utilizes CPOE. A couple that come to mind might be in a true emergency or in the case of a physician being unable to get to a computer. Unfortunately physicians frequently abuse the verbal order system out of laziness, creating a dangerous situation. I’ve had to clarify my fair share of verbal orders that were poorly transcribed from the physicians lips, to the nurses mind, and finally onto paper. There are simply too many variable during the process. It’s like the old game where you start a rumor with one person and have them pass it on to someone else and so on down the line. At the end of the line, you have a garbled mess. Verbal orders are like that. CPOE is implemented as a safety feature to reduce prescribing and transcription error, but to benefit from the feature physicians have to use it.

  • Palm OS aficionados can continue to run their old software on the Palm Pre.

    classic_weboxMotionApps has a piece of software for the Palm webOS called Classic. It is basically an emulator that allows webOS-based devices like the Palm Pre to run legacy Palm OS software. The benefits are obvious: you have access to tons of software and it allows you to hold onto your old Palm OS apps just a little bit longer. Classic creates a virtual Palm environment on the Palm Pre, similar to what VMware’s Fusion software does with Windows on the Mac.

    Because the emulator runs inside webOS, the Palm created on the Palm Pre doesn’t have hardware buttons; however all the normal Palm buttons are available on the screen. You can continue to utilize all the basic Palm functionality, including your calendar, contacts, and memos. In addition, MotionApps is working on a software update that will allow users to HotSync the emulated Palm. I don’t know when the update will be available, but you can follow the MotionApps blog here.

    Classic looks like a great piece of software, and for only 30 bucks you really can’t go wrong. If only Palm would have been smart enough to use Verizon as their exclusive carrier, or vice versa, I think I’d be using a Palm Pre right about now.

  • Hybrid cloud to speed things up?

    ByteandSwitch: “Every week or so one major internet service or another goes down for a moment, Amazon S3, Google Apps, Twitter etc… Let’s face it, if you store data in the cloud there are a hundred variables between you and your data and if any one of those variables decides to, well, be variable, then you may not be able to get to your data for a period of time. This does not mean that you can’t use the cloud, it means that you can’t put data that you are going to need immediate access to solely in the cloud.  What this does mean is using a hybrid model for cloud storage. As we demonstrate in our latest video “What is Hybrid Cloud Storage?” a hybrid cloud is an appliance that is placed on the customer’s site to act as a intermediary storage location for data that is in route to the cloud. The appliance serves many purposes: translation from CIFS/NFS to more internet friendly protocols, local cache for rapid restores of last copy of a backup or archive and as a place to get to data that would otherwise be inaccessible due to some sort of connection issue.”

    Hybrid_cloud

    – This actually makes perfect sense to me. One issue that often comes up when discussing a cloud environment, besides access to data, is speed. We have started using thin clients here at the hospital in place of desktop machines, and there is little doubt that performance has suffered. With the option discussed in the article above, data would move quickly between you and the local environment while in use, but slowly moved into the cloud in the background. I like it.




  • Hi-Tech patch for migraine relief

    ZelrixZelrix is a transdermal patch containing sumatriptan for the treatment of acute migraine headache developed by NuPathe, a pharmaceutical company specializing in the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders. The patch is based on NuPathe’s proprietary SmartRelief™ platform, which according to the manufacturer’s website is “a non-invasive technology that utilizes low-level electrical energy to transport drugs through the skin in a safe and effective manner. The rate and amount of drug delivered is controlled electronically, so that the patient receives consistent therapy each and every time. Iontophoresis is an established drug delivery technology with multiple applications currently being used by physicians.” The SmartRelief™ iontophoresis utilizes pre-programmed, embedded electronics in the patch to provide consistent therapeutic drug levels. This is very interesting technology with many potential applications. Imagine the uses in professional sports where iontophoresis is frequently utilized to administer NSAIDS and corticosteroids for the treatment of inflammation