The Pharmaceutical Authentication Sensor System, PASS Rx, by Centice is a medication verification system designed to help pharmacists avoid dispensing errors. The system uses a combination of two sensors to create a unique identification profile for oral solid medications. The first sensor utilizes Ramon Spectroscopy to calculate chemical composition while the second sensor, a “machine vision†sensor, takes images of the medication to determine size, color and shape. The information gathered from both sensors is combined to create a unique identification for the drug that can be compared against the Centice database for verification.
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Category: Cool Technology
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Cool Technology for Pharmacy
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“What’d I miss?†– Week of March 7, 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
Ask any pharmacist that’s been around for a while and they’ll tell you about the headaches associated with faxed medication orders. I can’t tell you how inefficient a fax machine can be for order retrieval, storage and sorting. In fact, fax machines really can’t do any of that. Well, you no longer have to deal with fax machines in the pharmacy if you chose not to.
Pharmacy, or physician, order management systems like OmniLinkRx offer a software only solution designed to reduce the influx of faxed orders to the pharmacy. Not only do systems like this reduce confusion, they also reduce paper waste. I suppose that makes OmniLinkRx “greenâ€. Consider OmniLinkRx a digital fax machine that sends the order to your computer monitor instead of a fax machine.
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Cool Technology for Pharmacy
IV Automation / Robotics
Today I attended a webinar from Baxa titled “Improving Sterile Compounding Quality Through Automation†given by Eric Kastango RPh, MBA, FASHP. The presentation was very interesting. I thought it was going to focus more on technology, but it was heavy on the human component of contamination in the clean room environment with only minor mention of automated IV devices. Anyway, during the presentation Kastago talked a bit about robotic automation for clean rooms and mentioned the CytoCare Robot.
The CytoCare Robot is a chemotherapy compounding robot in an ISO class 5 environment. According to the website CytoCare is “the world’s first and only automated robotic system for the safe compounding of hazardous, life-critical cancer therapy medications.â€
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Cool Technology for Pharmacy
One of the best pharmacy jobs I ever had was working for a small compounding pharmacy in the Bay Area of California. Many of the prescription items compounded in this particular pharmacy had to be flavored based on the needs of the patient; sometimes animal, sometimes human. Regardless, the art of flavoring was always a challenge but also a lot of fun. I learned quite a bit about how to mask bitterness, how to use various sweeteners to get the flavor just right and how to use various flavor combinations to create some pretty tasty medications; it’s an art. And don’t underestimate the amount of science that goes into creating flavors like these or the science behind using those flavors to mask unpleasant tastes. It takes time, energy and patience.FLAVORx, a company in Columbia, MD has taken a lot of the experimentation out of the flavoring equation by creating a system for dealing with “yucky medicineâ€.
According to the FLAVORx website, their product is in use by over 35,000 pharmacies nationwide. The company website offers a handy Pharmacy Locator to assist you in finding a pharmacy nearby that can flavor your child’s, or your own, medication.
FLAVORx lets children and their parents customize the medicine to whatever they’d prefer it to taste like
Our scientifically tested FLAVORxâ„¢ Flavoring System is available at pharmacies nationwide and is designed to make any liquid medication easier for your child to take. Using our unique Bitterness Suppressor and Sweetness Enhancer, Pharmacists mask the unpleasant flavor associated with many prescription and over-the-counter liquid medications. And with our wide assortment of kid-approved flavors, your child (with the help of the Pharmacist) can customize their medicine to suit their individual tastes.
All FLAVORxâ„¢ flavors are sugar-free, gluten-free, dye-free, casein-free, inert, and non-allergenic. Our flavors are made from a blend of natural and artificial ingredients and we never use phosphates or other potentially harmful chemicals.
Available flavors include apple, banana, banana orange, bubblegum, chocolate, chocolate cherry, citrus punch, grape, grape bubblegum, grapeade, lemon, orange, raspberry, sour apple, strawberry, vanilla, watermelon and wild cherry.
Check out the FLAVORx Favorable Flavors tool (PDF)
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Cool Technology for Pharmacy
This week’s Cool Technology for Pharmacy is the OnDemand 400 for RxMap from MTS, a company that specializes in adherence packaging systems.
According to the MTS website:
OnDemand ® 400 for RxMap ® is the first pharmacy automation equipment system designed specifically for multi-med adherence packaging.
This efficient system uses OnDemand technology to dispense multiple medications for
a single patient quickly and accurately and in a fraction of the time it would take to do it manually. This pharmacy automation equipment system utilizes a custom interface to work with your existing information systems, enabling automated workflow management in the pharmacy. This single data input process reduces input time and the possibility of data entry errors. OnDemand ® 400 for RxMap ® uses bar-code technology to accurately dispense multiple medications into one compartment – as many or as few as needed. RxMap ® Adherence Packs vary in size and shape to meet the needs of the customers you serve. The finished product is a patient – specific adherence package filled “just-in-time†for your customer. -
Cool Technology for Pharmacy
Bar code medication administration (BCMA) is nothing new, but remains a hot topic in healthcare nonetheless. Another topic that has generated significant interest in healthcare over the past couple of years is the use of smart pumps, which I have posted on before. Unfortunately for most hospitals the two remain independent of one another with no appreciable integration. The integration of smart pumps with BCMA was one topic of discussion at this years ASHP midyear. I attended a couple of presentations from healthcare systems that had successfully integrated information from their pharmacy information system (PhIS) directly into their smart pumps for use with their BCMA system. Like many other ideas presented at large conferences, the situation is the exception rather than the rule.
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Cool Technology for Pharmacy
The ValiMed Medication Validation System by CDEX, Inc.
According to the ValiMed website:
CDEX’s technology stands alone, able to precisely identify medications in real time with its patented Enhanced Photoemission Spectroscopy technology.Energy at a preset wavelength interrogates the selected substance, capturing a unique emission spectrum which is then compared to the propriety signature, resulting in a simple “VALIDATED†reading when matched.
Each medication reveals its own distinct and easily readable signature. By comparing the fingerprint of a tested medication against the signature for that medication in our data library, the ValiMed technology is able to verify a match, presuming there is one.
The ValiMed Medication and Narcotic Validation System offers superior value to hospital medication safety programs and quality control processes by:
– Providing immediate, real-time validation of the substance itself.
– Providing an opportunity to standardize and optimize internal medication safety processes including Training, QA and Regulatory Compliance.
– Providing a real-time means of validating narcotic returns and mitigating narcotic diversion.
– Providing pharmacy staff and clinicians with a simple, fast, straightforward and cost-effective way to ensure that the RIGHT drug in the RIGHT dose is administered to the patient.
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Cool Technology for Pharmacy
Biometric scanning is an interesting notion. It’s nothing new and I’ve blogged about the possible uses of speech recognition and facial recognition in the past. Many facilities utilize basic forms of biometric identification, such as fingerprint scanning, as a deterrent on devices like automated dispensing cabinets, i.e. Pyxis. While fingerprint identification is certainly a nice security feature, it can also be a royal pain at times. Well, Fujitsu has taken fingerprint scanning to a whole new level.The Fujitsu PalmSecure is a palm vein authentication system that takes a snapshot of the veins in your hand as your hand hovers above the scanner. Apparently the vein pattern in an individual’s hand is unique, giving the device the ability to identify the person. It is quick, painless, accurate, and appears to be much easier than finger print scanning.
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Cool Technology for Pharmacy
This weeks cool technology comes by way of a comment left at RxInformatics.com in response to a recent post I wrote on smartphones and pharmacy practice.The author of the comment, @pillguy, is an iPhone fanboy and pharmacy technology guru.
@pillguy: “The iPhone certainly has some promising applications related to EHRs. Airstrip is one of the coolest I have seen.
The smartphone takes PDAs to the next level with access to realtime information. I can see a TheraDoc, Pharmacy OneSource, or Zynx type clinical monitoring/alerting app fit in with the Airstrip suite nicely.â€
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