Jerry Fahrni

Author: Jerry Fahrni

  • Recent travels with the iPad

    During my vacation last week I spent a couple of days in Nashville. The trip to Nashville was supposed to be short, fly out on Tuesday morning and return on Wednesday afternoon, but it didn’t turn out that way. I typically carry a laptop or tablet PC when I travel, but decided not to at the last minute secondary to the short turnaround. Instead I threw my iPad in my bag along with my DROID in an effort to travel light.

    The trip to Nashville was anything but smooth. My flight was delayed twice in Sacramento and I ended up needing two connections to get to Nashville instead of one. Fortunately for me I had the iPad with its long battery life to keep me entertained for most of the trip. I started in Fresno at 3:00am PST Tuesday morning and arrived in Nashville at 11:30pm EST Tuesday night. I used the iPad to play games in the Sacramento airport during my first 3 hour delay. I made sure I stayed close to an electrical outlet to ensure that I had plenty of battery life for the flight. Between using my DROID heavily, landings, takeoffs and walking from gate to gate I had no trouble making it to Nashville on a single charge.
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  • Confusion and varying opinions regarding the role of pharmacy in informatics remains the norm

    Because I am a member of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (AHSP) I have access to the ASHP Pharmacy Informatics and Technology section listserv. Listservs are a great source of information, and as the name implies, this one is particularly good for getting information on all things related to pharmacy automation, technology and informatics.

    A recent post on the informatics listserv caught my attention. The thread was started by a pharmacist asking what skills are necessary for a career in pharmacy informatics. Several pharmacists have chimed in with some great advice, while others have given what I consider to be less than helpful advice. Needless to say the responses have been all over the board as there is no universally accepted definition of what an informatics pharmacists does. Some pharmacists have recommended gaining skill in specific areas, i.e. reporting, HL7 ,etc, while others have taken a broad approach by offering advice on gaining experience in operations, project management, leadership and workflow concept and design.
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  • AJHP abstracts available for Kindle

    I was pleasantly surprised today when I read my ASHP NewsLink and found the following tidbit:

    “Download AJHP Abstracts to Kindle Reader – Users of the Kindle wireless reading device, from Amazon.com Inc., can now automatically download abstracts of AJHP articles as they become available.”

    AJHP abstracts are delivered directly to the Kindle e-reader via Amazon’s Whispernet for a monthly subscription of $1.99. However, details are a little sketchy as there is limited information available at the Amazon website.

    It’s nice to see AJHP embracing digital technology. It’s a little late in the game and only abstracts are currently available, but it’s clearly a step in the right direction. Hopefully this is the first of many new digital offerings from AJHP and ASHP. I would eventually like to see AJHP journal articles available in their entirety for all digital readers. Articles are currently available for download in PDF format, but that’s really not the same as having a document formated for use on an e-reader.

    Additional information can be found at the Amazon website here.

  • Top blog posts and searches from last week (28)

    I always find it interesting to see what brings people to my website and what they decided to read once they get here.

    Most read posts over the past 7 days:

    1. Best iPhone / iPod Touch Applications for Pharmacists
    2. The cloud still slow to gain acceptance in healthcare
    3. Cool Technology for Pharmacy – Post from before I started putting the name of the cool technology in the blog title. This particular post was from June 18, 2009 and covered Alaris Smartpumps.
    4. Cool Technology for Pharmacy – Practice Fusion EMR
    5. Curriculum Vitae
    6. We need a better system for medication reconciliation
    7. Quick update: Pharmacy iPad use
    8. Cool Technology for Pharmacy – Post from before I started putting the name of the cool technology in the blog title. This particular post was from September 10, 2009 and covered the capsule machine.
    9. “What’d I miss?” – Week of July 4, 2010
    10. Is the 30-minute rule for medication administration good or bad?

    Top searchterm phrases used over the past 7 days:

    1. “med rec application vendors “
    2. “citrix ipad how to“
    3. “ capsule machine ”
    4. “practice fusion ipad“
    5. “black cloud“
    6. “cloud computing”
    7. “medscape mobile“
    8. “motion j3500“
    9. “iphone pharmacist apps“
    10. “ alaris pump ”

  • Using the concept of the iPad to further pharmacy education

    A few weeks ago I installed the Blausen Human Atlas HD application on my iPad. The application features some pretty incredible 3D images and video. The videos provide an animated narrative on a host of medical conditions and treatments. In addition the Blausen application offers a cool 3D rendering of the human body and a glossary of terms. The images contained in this blog really don’t do it justice, as the iPad’s screen does a very nice job of displaying images like these.

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  • Thinix Touch UI for tablet PCs

    I’ve seen Thinix Touch before, but have renewed interest in the product as I continue to explore new uses for various tablets in my possession. The application has been available on touchscreen computers like the HP TouchSmart series for a while. There’s even a Thinix products page on the company website that lists several devices that are available with the Touch UI.
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  • “What’d I miss?” – Week of July 4, 2010

    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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  • The cloud still slow to gain acceptance in healthcare

    There’s an interesting article at InformationWeek about healthcare and the cloud. The article talks a little bit about the concerns surrounding security in the cloud and what I believe is an undeserved fear of using cloud based services and storage for healthcare information.

    In the article a pediatrician that is also director of clinical informatics for Atrius Health is quoted as saying “At the moment I’m not convinced that there’s a secure enough place in the cloud or that the functionality exists for us to do everything that we need to do in the cloud. The cloud allows for a tremendous amount of interconnectivity between computers because it’s using data storage that’s free amongst different networks and I wouldn’t want healthcare information being scattered in a way that I couldn’t protect it appropriately.” I’m not sure I understand the perceived insecurity of the cloud as the existing infrastructure for storing patient information in healthcare is, by design, insecure.
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  • Quick Hit – A couple of interesting bar-coding tidbits

    There were a couple of things about bar-coding in the web-stream that caught my attention today.

    The first item was a tweet from @hospitalrx mentioning an application at USA.gov for the iPhone and Android OS that can be used to identify product recalls. The application is appropriately called Recalls.gov.

    Now, those recalls are right at your fingertips, thanks to the new RECALLS.GOV mobile application. Whether you’re at your child’s day care center or a yard sale, whether you’re at a store or at home, you can now type a product’s name into your phone and learn immediately whether that product has been recalled because of a safety concern. You can also see photos of recalled products and learn what to do with recalled products in your homes.

    Even though the website is lacking detail, the application does offer the ability to scan the bar-code on a given item to determine its recall status, although I have not tested this functionality. Additional mobile applications from USA.gov can be found here.

    And from Barcode.com: “Motorola has released a tiny new barcode scanner called the CS3000. The CS3000, shown below, is just about 3.5 inches long, 2 inches wide and less than an inch thick. It weighs only 2.45oz according the Motorola spec sheet. It is capable of scanning 1D barcodes and has a 24 hour battery life. The CS3000 has a USB connector and also Bluetooth. It’s 512MB of flash memory can hold roughly a million bar codes.“

    These things are neat. You can download the spec sheet for the Motorola CS3000 scanner here (PDF).

  • Top blog posts and searches from last week (27)

    I always find it interesting to see what brings people to my website and what they decided to read once they get here.

    Most read posts over the past 7 days:

    1. An almost disastrous bar-coding mishap
    2. Cool Technology for Pharmacy – Post from before I started putting the name of the cool technology in the blog title. This particular post was from September 10, 2009 and covered the capsule machine.
    3. Cool Technology for Pharmacy – Another post from before I started putting the name of the cool technology in the blog title. This particular post was from June 18, 2009 and covered Alaris Smartpumps.
    4. Best iPhone / iPod Touch Applications for Pharmacists
    5. Quick Hit – Mobile devices in our pharmacy – This post elicited a couple of interesting comments.
    6. Curriculum Vitae
    7. “What’d I miss?” – Week of June 27
    8. Cool Technology for Pharmacy –NDC Translator
    9. About -People checking up on me.
    10. Motion J3500 gets a wicked update – People are still interested in tablet PCs, even with that other device grabbing all the press.

    Top searchterm phrases used over the past 7 days:

    1. “ feton capsule filling machine ”
    2. “ alaris pumps ”
    3. “ cerner and pandora data systems ”
    4. “ dell xt2 ”
    5. “ alaris pump ”
    6. “ capsule machine ”
    7. “ alaris infusion pump ”
    8. “ pharmacokinetics iphone ”
    9. “ free lexi-drugs windows mobile free ”
    10. “cloud computing”