Jerry Fahrni

Author: Jerry Fahrni

  • Definition confusion with Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0

    The Journal of Medical Internet Research has a very interesting article on the definitions of Heath 2.0 and Medicine 2.0 found in the scientific literature. Take a look at this table showing the various definitions for each. Wow, I wonder if a universally accepted definition will ever be developed and if so who’s going to be the one to develop it?

    Definition of Health 2.0 and Medicine 2.0: A Systematic Review
    Tom H Van De Belt1, MSc; Lucien JLPG Engelen1; Sivera AA Berben1, MSc; Lisette Schoonhoven2, PhD

    ABSTRACT
    Background: During the last decade, the Internet has become increasingly popular and is now an important part of our daily life. When new “Web 2.0” technologies are used in health care, the terms “Health 2.0″ or “Medicine 2.0” may be used.
    Objective: The objective was to identify unique definitions of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0 and recurrent topics within the definitions.
    Methods: A systematic literature review of electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL) and gray literature on the Internet using the search engines Google, Bing, and Yahoo was performed to find unique definitions of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0. We assessed all literature, extracted unique definitions, and selected recurrent topics by using the constant comparison method.
    Results: We found a total of 1937 articles, 533 in scientific databases and 1404 in the gray literature. We selected 46 unique definitions for further analysis and identified 7 main topics.
    Conclusions: Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0 are still developing areas. Many articles concerning this subject were found, primarily on the Internet. However, there is still no general consensus regarding the definition of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0. We hope that this study will contribute to building the concept of Health 2.0/Medicine 2.0 and facilitate discussion and further research.
    (J Med Internet Res 2010;12(2):e18)
    doi:10.2196/jmir.1350

  • Top blog posts and searches from last week (24)

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

    Most read posts over the past 7 days:

    1. Medscape Mobile for the BlackBerry – Still rolling along after several weeks at the top. The BlackBerry is a long way from being dead.
    2. Participation in the ASHP Summer Meeting from afar #ashpsm10 – I would like to see ASHP adopt some form of live webcast during their large annual meeting like the Summer Meeting and Midyear. I don’t see a downside.
    3. Scanning difficulties with certain barcodes
    4. Cool Technology for Pharmacy – Practice Fusion EMR – Great piece of software.
    5. A recent trifecta for bar-coding
    6. Best iPhone / iPod Touch Applications for Pharmacists – Just throw any Apple product in the mix and it’s bound to make the list.
    7. Quick update: Pharmacy iPad use – See #6 comment
    8. Cool Technology for Pharmacy – This was before I started putting the name of the cool technology in the blog title. This particular post was from Jun 18, 2009 and covered Alaris Smartpumps.
    9. Curriculum Vitae
    10. Musings on the “cloud”

    Top searchterm phrases used over the past 7 days:

    1. “cloud computing cartoon”
    2. “black cloud”
    3. “ipad practice fusion”
    4. “dynamed”
    5. “pharmacist dispensing equipment“
    6. “ipad pharmacy applications“
    7. “drug information handbook and ipod“
    8. “medscape.com/blackberry“
    9. “latitude xt2“
    10. “ipad in pharmacy“

  • Tools of the trade

    I try to keep my weekend posts light, and today is no different. As I sit here waiting for the rest of the Fahrni crew to come to life I ran across a tweet from Garry Sykes that simply said “tool of the trade….very occasionally!” Following the link in the tweet takes you to a photo of a mortar and pestle.
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  • A recent trifecta for bar-coding

    Bar-code medication administration has been around for a while, but hasn’t gained the same notoriety as other forms of healthcare technology like computerized provider order entry (CPOE) and clinical decision support (CDS). However, it looks like the tide is starting to change as we’re currently in a unique position to see bar-coding from several different angles.
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  • Scanning difficulties with certain barcodes

    I’ve been following the Twitter stream from the ASHP Midyear in Tampa (#ashpsm10). Sunday morning I saw a Tweet from Karl Gumpper come through the ticker stating “ASHP Statement on Barcode on Inventory, Compound & Dispense approved by House of Delegates.” That’s a good thing.

    The ASHP Statement on Bar-code Verification During Inventory, Preparation, and Dispensing of Medications can be found here. I re-read the paper Monday morning. There is a lot of good information throughout the document, but I one paragraph in particular caught my attention. “In addition, for BCMA to function, a vast majority of doses must be accurately bar coded, meaning there must be a highly reliable relationship between the information in the bar code and the contents of the dose. Additionally, the bar code must be readable by commercially-available scanners. Although doses delivered directly from manufacturer-labeled packages generally meet these conditions, there are numerous drug products that may not.” This makes sense as a bar-code is useless if it can’t be easily read by a scanner.  And believe me when I say that we find our fair share of bar-codes that don’t want to cooperate. The same can be said for bar-code scanners. I’ve heard people say that almost any of the new bar-code scanners today will do the job. I humbly disagree as I’ve had the misfortune of using some awful bar-code scanners on our way to settling on those currently used in our facility. Some of it is personal preference, but some of it is quality of the device. I’ve written about my opinion for consistency with scanning hardware before.
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  • Visual diagnostic aid: VisualDx

    VisualDx is a point-of-care application designed to help clinicians generate a diagnisis for various skin conditions; skin lesions, rashes, etc.
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  • Participating in the ASHP Summer Meeting from afar #ashpsm10

    The inability to physically be in Tampa, FL shouldn’t stop someone from participating in the ASHP Summer Meeting. Technology doesn’t care that I’m 2700 miles away or that I’m sitting in my home in my bunny slippers with Diet Pepsi in hand. With a webcam and speaker phone I was able to join a user group discussion held by Talyst.
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  • A little Saturday morning fun with Wordle

    Wordle is a neat little online application that allows you to make word clouds. All you do is enter a bunch of words or the URL to your favorite site and boom, you get a fancy word cloud to call your own.  The word clouds change every time you do it, but every once in a while you get a keeper. I just think it’s cool.
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  • “What’d I miss?” – Week of May 30, 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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  • Cool Technology for Pharmacy – Practice Fusion EMR

    Practice Fusion is a company based out of San Francisco that offers a free web-based electronic medical record (EMR), or is it electronic health record (EHR). To the best of my knowledge Practice Fusion was founded in 2005 and has been rapidly expanding ever since. Practice Fusion offers its EMR software free of charge in exchange for putting up with a few advertisements. The advertisements are non-obtrusive and don’t appear to get in the way of any of the application’s functionality. In fact, I didn’t even notice them. The best part of this revenue model is that it makes the software freely accessible to any physician that would like to use it. In addition, users are not required to install any new hardware of software. Very nice.
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