Jerry Fahrni

Author: Jerry Fahrni

  • Medical calculators available on Medscape Mobile app for Android

    Medscape Mobile is a nice little free app to have on your Android device. It’s no Lexi-comp, but it’ll certainly do a respectable job in a pinch.

    I’ve been accessing Medscape for years. I think it may have been the first online reference site I subscribed to. I frequently read through the pharmacy news section of the site. It’s pretty good.

    Anyway, I received an email notification that the Android version of the app now includes medical calculators. The calculator selection is pretty good. No awesome pharmacokinetics calculators like RxCalc (shameless plug), but still pretty good.

    I spent a little time playing with it yesterday. I’ve included some screen shots below (click to enlarge).

    You can grab the app for free at the Google Play store here. Enjoy.

  • Sadly #ASHP misses the mark

    I’ve been an ASHP member off and on for much of my career. I’m not much for membership in organizations, but I thought ASHP would be worthy. Heck, they’re the biggest professional pharmacy organization in the country (world?), why wouldn’t I be a member.

    I try to give them the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes I wonder who’s driving the bus. I believe ASHP’s goals should be to: 1) promote the profession, 2) improve the profession, 3) defend the profession from nefarious sorts, , and 4) offer guidance to help move the profession into the future. That’s it. Read into it what you will, but pharmacists and technicians pay to be members of ASHP. Why? Because they believe ASHP will make pharmacy better. Otherwise there’s no point.

    I’ve dabbled in some of the small groups within AHSP, specifically the Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology (SOPIT). These small groups focus on specific issues within the profession. Their purpose is to come up with solutions and recommendations. And in the case of the SOPIT the goal is to help solve problems associated with pharmacy informatics, automation and technology within the practice of pharmacy. It’s actually a good group that has done some great things over the years.

    One of these groups in particular had great promise as it brought together several companies in the industry to look at the problem associated with informational standards; particularly drug information updates to pharmacy formularies. One of the problems with information within formularies (drug dictionaries, drug masters, <insert other name here>) is that standards simply don’t exist. Everyone has their own way of doing it, which causes problems.

    While serving as the IT pharmacist at my last facility I had to manually maintain several formularies: pharmacy information system, ADC’s, pharmacy inventory management system, barcode labeling system, online hospital formulary, etc. It was time consuming and fraught with error. And before you ask, yes I made mistakes in those systems that caused problems; problems that were a bear to fix.

    The group mentioned above was brought together to look at this problem and propose a method for companies to collaborate with the sole purpose of bringing a single standard to the practice that could be utilized to populate hospital formularies in a “downhill” fashion, i.e. one formulary update delivered to a centralized location that could be pushed out to other formularies. One standard. One location to update. One  formulary to monitor. One formulary to maintain. Simple. Fewer errors. Less work. Better for the profession.

    Unfortunately AHSP decided to kill the project. I’m greatly disappointed in ASHP for doing this.
    (more…)

  • 5-Minute Clinical Consult 2013 available for Android

    I don’t use the 5-Minute Clinical Consult reference, but someone might. If you decide to purchase feel free to use the discount code below. I received it in an email from Skyscape.

  • Don’t get between people and their weed. Just sayin’

    I spent the better part of a half hour tonight getting beat up over on Google plus because I’m not a big fan of medical marijuana. As a pharmacist I see the arguments for its use as rather weak, at best. But as long as it’s legal feel free to use it to your heart’s content. However, please don’t make a federal case out of it when you can’t get your buzz on anymore.

    The post I’m referring to is here, which references an article about the “World’s Biggest Marijuana Dispensary Targeted By The Feds”. I made the mistake of saying that there are alternatives and that the need for medical marijuana was baloney.

    People got pissed and started attacking me. All kinds of things were said to me like “nature is better”, Big Pharma owns me, I’m corrupt, an ass, out to make money, not open to alternatives, don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m using bogus pharmacology arguments, need job security, I’m ignorant, been brain washed, etc. My favorite is the dude that kept screaming about natural remedies. He cracked me up. Actually, most of them cracked me up. It was like talking with a six year old. No, that’s not true. It’s probably more like talking to a 13 year old, know it all.

    I tried to have a conversation, but I eventually had to take my leave because the conversation was going nowhere. And I was taking a beating. The ignorance inside the post was not only startling, but a little scary. Meh, what are you going to do? This is what the general public thinks.

    If you really want to know why healthcare is in trouble look no further than the underpinnings of the comments below, i.e. people have no idea what they’re talking about, but think they are absolute experts about healthcare.

    Something else comes to mind. I actually think some of those commenting admitted to toking up, which is interesting because these sites are open to the public. What would their employers think about that. I know one has something to do with the OMG!Droid website. I’ll never drop by that site again. Won’t recommend it to anyone else for that matter.

    Anyway, below are some of the comments for your entertainment.
    (more…)

  • What the heck is MolPrime for Android? I’ll tell you….

    How’s this for convoluted? Following a link to Chemspy about the Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) app in the iTunes store led me to Cheminformatics where I got all giddy about finding a website dedicated to “chemical information software for next generation computing environments”, and eventually found the post below:

    “The Android port of MolPrime is getting closer to being a functional app. As you can see in the two-part snapshot to the right, the both the main screen and the diagram sketcher have enough capabilities to present the initial facade. The sketcher currently only displays the structure and some buttons, but that’s still solid progress.”

    I’m a fan of all things chemistry, especially when it involves awesome apps that let you look at and draw chemical structures. I mean seriously, is there anything cooler than that? Doubtful. It was like stumbling onto the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
    (more…)

  • Effect of a Pharmacist Intervention on Clinically Important Medication Errors After Hospital Discharge [article]

    Ann Intern Med. 3 July 2012;157(1):1-10

    A study looking at pharmacist-assited med rec, counseling and telephone follow-up after dischage for adults hospitalized with acute coronary syndromes or acute decompensated heart failure. According to the article pharmacist intervention didn’t do much in the way of reducing “clinically important medication errors“, but may have led to fewer potential ADEs.
    (more…)

  • Saturday morning coffee [July 14 2012]

    So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the taps that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

    The coffee mug to the right was part of a Pharmacy Week swag bag when I was still a real pharmacist. Pharmacy Week occurs yearly in October. It’s an attempt by some of the professional pharmacy organizations to increase the publics awareness of the profession. It also gives the pharmacists employer a chance to hand our “atta’ boys”. One year I received a folding beach chair, another year I recieved a water bottle, and so on. Not sure what year I received this mug, though. I haven’t actually worked as a pharmacist for a couple of years so it’s been at least that long.
    (more…)

  • Color to differentiate information on pharmacy labels

    I put this up the other day at my Talyst blog. I don’t often cross post between that blog and this one because I tend to keep the “corporate” blog a bit more watered down. But in this case I thought it was worth it. I’ve been thinking a lot about the use of color in pharmacy labels. I’m not sure why we don’t see more of it in pharmacy. It may have something to do with the limited number of suitable color printers and label stock. As prevalent as color printing is in the consumer world, you’d think it would be simple. Unfortunately it’s not.

    I for one think color has a place in the pharmacy. It could be used to improve patient safety, and when used appropriately improve workflow and operations.
    (more…)

  • Stabilization of vaccines and antibiotics in silk and eliminating the cold chain [article]

    This would be huge for pharmacy if/when it all gets worked out and commercialized. Eliminating cold chain? Wow.

    chemistry world:

    Kaplan’s process to formulate drugs with silk is incredibly simple. After preparing a solution of silk protein in water, the medicines are added and the mixture is freeze-dried to create a stable preservative matrix. Kaplan explains that the silk protein is generally quite hydrophobic and forms strong stabilising interactions with molecules embedded in it. ‘Coupled with the ability to process silk just in water at ambient conditions means you can put sensitive molecules in there and not lose their function,’ he adds.

    ….

    The group prepared films of silk containing the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and showed that it can be stored for six months at 45°C and retain more than 85% of its activity, compared to powdered forms that degraded in a few weeks.

    Silk films impregnated with the antibiotic tetracycline also lasted longer than solutions, but an unexpected result was that the silk also seemed to stabilise the antibiotic against degradation by light. ‘Tetracycline is inherently light-sensitive,’ says Kaplan, ‘and we noticed that the films weren’t changing colour at the same rate as the solutions [when they were stored in the light].’ He explains that the stabilisation mechanism is unclear – the silk is transparent, so it’s not just that it’s physically blocking the light out. ‘We assume it’s the same reason we see the other stabilisation effects,’ he says, ‘but we need to probe that further.’

    An abstract of the article can be found online at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scinces website.

    [cite]10.173/pnas.1206210109[/cite]

  • CMS allows repackaging of single-dose vials “under certain circumstances”

    Each Friday I receive a newsletter from CompoundingToday.com. The newsletter features an editorial from Dr. Loyd V. Allen, Jr, Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Pharmaceutical Compounding.

    A couple of weeks ago the editorial focused on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) newly clarified position on the use of sing-dose vials in medication distribution. It’s a rather important piece of information that I haven’t seen elsewhere. You’d think hospitals would be jumping all over this as it not only saves waste, i.e. cost, but can help with the drug shortage issue as well. It’s hard to say why I haven’t heard more about it, but I haven’t. Go figure.

    Anyway, Dr. Allen’s editorial is reproduced in its entirety below. The CMS document can be found here (PDF).
    (more…)