Jerry Fahrni

Category: Cool Technology

  • Medication packaging that expires: the Self Expiring concept

    Medgadget: “Designers Kanupriya Goel and Gautam Goel propose a new design for pill blister packs that will display a message not to take the drugs once enough time passes. The material would consist of two layers, with the top containing the original drug’s info label and a bottom layer with ink that slowly seeps into the top. After enough time passes, the warning message will become clear and the patient will immediately know to get a fresh refill.  The Self Expiring, as the design concept is called, won a 2013 red dot design award.”

    SelfExpiring

    From the reddot design award site: “Self Expiring is a packaging material for medicinal products that visually ‘self expires’ over a fixed period of time. This packaging will graphically display a ‘not fit for consumption’ message using universally accepted danger signs in regional languages. This solution will prevent illegal sales of expired medicines and fatalities arising from their consumption.”

    Great concept. It would be cool if they could take it one step further and have the package analyze the medication inside and “expire” it when the potency goes below a pre-defined percentage. Expiration dates are good, but they don’t always tell the whole story.

  • Cool i.v. room technology – Drugcam Assist

    [Update 12/22/2013: I received an email from one of the inventors/developers of Drugcam software informing me of a new website that contains more information about the system. The site is eurekam.fr, which contains pages describing both Drugcam Assist and Drugcam Control. It’s still not a great amount of information, but at least it’s more than I had.]

    I’ve talked about technology for the i.v. room extensively on this weblog. It’s no secret that I think the i.v. room is the next frontier for pharmacy technology. The reason I think this is simple, the i.v. room is dangerous, and precious few healthcare systems are using technology to its fullest in that environment.

    I’m not the only one that thinks the i.v. room is important. As of December of 2012 I knew of basically four i.v. room workflow management systems: DoseEdg DoseEdge by Baxa, Pharm-Q In The Hood by Envision Telepharmacy, SP Central Telepharmacy System by ScriptPro, and Phocus Rx by Grifols.

    Joining the fray are at least two more systems that I saw at the ASHP Summer Meeting just last week: Cato software, which is now owned by DB, and Drugcam Assist by Getinge. Unfortunately you won’t find much about Drugcam Assist online, which is really too bad because it’s an amazing system. The website offers more information and a video demonstration for those that are willing to fill out a form and register. I was not willing.

    Drugcam Assist
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  • Every amateur mechanics dream – AR-media 3D tracker app

    Check out the video below from AR-Media using augmented reality (AR) and digital technology blended with real world scenarios to create an app to help would-be mechanics work on their cars. What a great, and practical use for AR. Reading instruction manuals for toy assembly at 2:00 AM on Christmas morning just went right out the window; been there.

    Now pair that same technology with Google Glass, develop an application that blends AR with medication identification technology and, BOOM, something really cool.

  • A view of pharmacy through Google Glass [simulated]

    I haven’t been this excited about a technology in quite some time. Google Glass makes hands-free operation a reality in the pharmacy. I don’t think it’s a long term fix as I believe that robotics will likely take over the distribution process someday, but not today. Today robotics remains expensive and clumsy.

    Unfortunately Google Glass is hard to come by. And there’s little chance I’ll get my hands on any (one?) in the foreseeable future. I did however stumble across a website that allows one to create a reasonable facsimile of what the view through Google Glass might be like.

    So I took a minute and did a quick mock-up of what a pharmacy technician might see if they were directed to pull a medication from a static shelf while wearing Google Glass. Click on the image below to get the full effect. A little information along with a little augmented reality (red box and arrow) would be cool.

    GGPick

     

    I think technology like this would be a great addition to any product that utilizes barcode scanning or requires photos. “Ok, glass, take photo”. Products like DoseEdge or Pharm-Q In The Hood that utilize cameras to document the compounding process could benefit from being able to snap a quick hands-free photo with only a voice command. Crud, you’re already looking at the product, which means Glass is too.

  • ResolutionMD diagnostic imaging for Android clears FDA

    MobiHealthNews: “Calgary Scientific announced this week that the US Food and Drug Administration had cleared its ResolutionMD software for diagnostic medical imaging on Android devices, including the Samsung Galaxy.

    Calgary Scientific claims that its ResolutionMD software, which now has six FDA clearances is the first diagnostic imaging app cleared for use on mobile devices, according to the company.

    In 2012 a study at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix found that radiologists using ResolutionMD Mobile versus a traditional PACS workstation were able to access CT scans of stroke victims 24 percent faster, according to the company. Calgary Scientific says the study found its software saved an average of 11 minutes per patient. This data appears to be new as our report at the time focused on the accuracy of the diagnoses instead of the specific time to diagnosis.”

    This is cools stuff. It’s also good timing. I was talking to a colleague today about where I think Android in heading in healthcare. What I see is similar to what I saw in the early days of iOS when it was just starting to gain traction in the healthcare arena.

    I’ll be at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix in a couple weeks, maybe they’ll let me check it out.

  • MedFolio, more medication compliance technology

    Seems like everyone has some piece of technology designed to help patients with medication adherence and/or compliance.

    What’s interesting to me is the number of different approaches there are out there to solve the problem. MedFolio looks similar to the old style medication organizers. It’s probably the most labor intensive solution I’ve seen, but then again it may be the most useful. Hard to say. From the videos I found on YouTube it looks like it’s been around for a while.
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  • Cool Pharmacy Technology – AdhereTech “smart pill bottle”

    AdhereTechI came across this today, the AdhereTech “smart pill bottle”. Not sure exactly how it works as the information on the website is a bit vague, but it appears to utilize sensors inside the bottle to measure content. What’s cool about it is that the bottle will provide information on both oral solids as well as liquids. That’s unique in the products that I’ve seen in the past.

    “Our bottles measure the exact amount of pills or liquid in the bottle in real-time, wirelessly send this HIPAA-compliant data into the cloud, and remind patients to take their medication via automated phone call or text message.”

    Medication adherence is a hot topic in healthcare these days, and AdhereTech is obviously trying to take advantage of it. Their blog is full of articles related to the topic.

    I would like to have provided more information on the AdhereTech bottle, but information on the product is scarce. I couldn’t find a single video explaining the product in detail.

    According to Josh Stein, the co-founder and CEO the company is preparing for several pilot projects to test the efficacy of their bottles compared to standard medication vials. The tests are scheduled to start in Q2 of 2013 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and The University of Pennsylvania.

    One other cool thing about AdhereTech is that they have an open API. “AdhereTech can integrate with all existing apps, programs, and adherence solutions.”

    I’ll be keeping an eye out for updates on this product. It’s an interesting concept. I hope to see it in the wild very soon.

  • Xenex device uses UV light to kill infectious organisms

    I thought this was pretty cool. Simple, yet effective.

    Syracuse.com: “St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center has stepped up its war against potentially deadly patient infections by unleashing killer robots. The hospital is using two robots, that resemble R2D2 from Star Wars, to kill germs in patient rooms with powerful blasts of ultraviolet light. After trying out the device last summer, St. Joe’s quickly saw a more than 50 percent decrease in its rate of Clostridium difficile – C. diff for short – infections. That highly contagious bug is rampant in hospitals and nursing homes. It can make patients very sick and sometimes kill them.” – That’s a big deal, especially when you’re talking about something as problematic as C. diff.
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  • fMRI study uncovers mechanism for drug cravings

    This article at Medical Xpress caught my interest because I’ve been reading Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 by Michio Kaku, which spends a fair amount of time talking about fMRI.

    “An fMRI machine uses “echoes” created by radio waves to peer inside living tissue. This allows us to pinpoint the location of the various signals, giving us spectacular 3-D images of inside the brain…

    The fMRI scans allows scientists to locate the presence of oxygen contained within hemoglobin in the blood. Since oxygenated hemoglobin contains the energy that fuels cell activity, detecting the flow of this oxygen allows one to trace the flow of thoughts in the brain.

    …fMRI scans can even detect the motion of thoughts in the living brain to a resolution of .1 millimeter, or smaller than the head of a pin, which corresponds to perhaps a few thousand neurons. An fMRI can thus give three-dimensional pictures of the energy flow inside the thinking brain to astonishing accuracy…”

    According to the Medical Xpress article:

    “Cues such as the sight of drugs can induce cravings and lead to drug-seeking behaviors and drug use. But cravings are also influenced by other factors, such as drug availability and self-control. To investigate the neural mechanisms involved in cue-induced cravings the researchers studied the brain activity of a group of 10 smokers, following exposure to cigarette cues under two different conditions of cigarette availability. In one experiment cigarettes were available immediately and in the other they were not. The researchers combined a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

    The results demonstrate that in smokers the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) tracks the level of craving while the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DPFC) is responsible for integrating drug cues and drug availability. Moreover, the DPFC has the ability to suppress activity in the OFC when the cigarette is unavailable. When the DPFC was inactivated using TMS, both craving and craving-related signals in the OFC became independent of drug availability.”

    Cool stuff.

    Article referenced: Takuya Hayashi, Ji Hyun Ko, Antonio P. Strafella, Alain Dagher; “Dorsolateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex interactions during self-control of cigarette craving.” PNAS, January 2013, DOI:10.1073/pnas.1212185110

  • Firefighers in Australia using ingestible capsule to monitor core body temperature

    Equivital LifeMonitor CapsuleEngadget: “A new swallowable pill has been trialled with 50 firefighters in Australia, aimed at monitoring body temperatures and other vital readings when working under extreme conditions. Using Equivital’s VitalSense Core Temperature capsules, they transmit readings to the companion EQ02 LifeMonitor, housed on the chest. This then sends data on skin temperature, heart rate and respiration rate to an external computer.”

    The ingestible capsule works in conjunction with Hidalgo‘s Equivital belt. According to medGadget the belt is the same one “used by Felix Baumgartner in his brilliant Red Bull Stratos jump”.

    I have to admit, this is both creepy and cool all at the same time. The capsule, along with all the tech wizardry is made by Equivital.

    Image credit news.com.au