Jerry Fahrni

Category: Pharmacy Informatics

  • Update: Siemens Innovations 2010 – Day 1

    Today was the first real working day at Innovations. Yesterday was taken up by all the registration stuff that you have to do when you arrive at a conference, and the welcome reception. Most of the morning was fairly benign as a good chunk of it was taken up by the opening session. I’m not a big fan of opening sessions as they tend to all sound the same. However, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of good sessions in addition to spending some time at the expo. I general love roaming the expo, but this year’s vendor selection is quite small and not really that interesting. It only took me about an hour to run through all the booths and collect a little reading material for later.

    One unplanned event that I have to mention was the pleasure of eating breakfast next to Johnathan Paul, a senior engineer in enterprise R & D at Siemens. He casually sat down next to me this morning and asked me what sessions I was planning on attending. I promptly gave him my spiel about attending the various pharmacy sessions, but in addition I lamented the fact that I was going to miss the presentation on “Virtualization, Cloud Computing, SOA, Elasticity, De-Duplication…What Do These Technical Terms Really Mean and How Do We Apply Them?” because it was at the same time as the pharmacy update. I didn’t know at the time, but he was the presenter for that session. After I got past my initial embarrassment we had a great conversation about many of the topics he planned to cover. I came away with some great information and knowledge that Siemens is doing things behind the scenes that makes me downright giddy.
    (more…)

  • Siemens Innovations ’10 here I come

    I’m sitting in the airport waiting for my flight. I’m on my way to Orlando for Innovations ’10 for Healthcare IT. Innovations is an annual conference put on by Siemens, who promote themselves as “ a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engineering, and operates in the industry, energy and healthcare sectors.” The hospital where I work uses several products from Siemens including Siemens Pharmacy, Siemens Medication Administration Check (MKA) and Soarian, which is their clinical information system for physicians and nurses, and the foundation for their CPOE system.
    (more…)

  • Slow progress in pharmacy automation and stale technology creates ho-hum interest

    Recently I’ve been in bit of a blogging slump. The world of technology suddenly appears a little less exciting. In fact, I find myself thinking of current technology as boring. I read lots of blog posts and articles that refer to new technologies as “revolutionary”, but I haven’t seen much revolutionary technology lately. In fact, most of the new technology is simply an iteration of the same theme; or worse, recycling of an old theme.

    Consumer technology is clearly ahead of healthcare with the exception of scanning devices like MRIs, which are pretty cool when you stop to think about what they do. However, some of the most recently vaunted consumer technologies are devices aimed at information consumption like the iPad or devices designed to access data and social media while on the go, i.e. the new crop of smartphones. It’s not really new technology per se, but rather a new application of already available technology.
    (more…)

  • Quick Hit – CPOE, a pharmacist’s time and laughter

    We’ve finally stepped off the curb and are moving full speed ahead with our CPOE implementation. As a result I spent quite a bit of time last week with our Siemens assigned CPOE consultant. He’s a pharmacist which makes things nice because we understand each other and speak the same language.

    The goal of one of the meetings I attended last week was to discuss the resources necessary to implement a CPOE system. Needless to say the project is going to be resource heavy. When it came time to tease out the IT pharmacist part of the project I was a little surprised at what I heard. The time requirements weren’t surprising – several hundred hours – but where the pharmacist fits into the entire scheme was.
    (more…)

  • 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.
    (more…)

  • 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.

    (more…)

  • Using the big boys to search for consumer health information

    I’m sure you’ve heard people say “just Google it”. Not only have I heard the phrase, but I’ve used it myself. But how do search engines like Google and Bing work for health related information? Out of simple curiosity I spent a few minutes with Google and Bing to find out.
    (more…)

  • RxCalc 1.1 now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch

    After a week of sitting in iTunes store limbo, RxCalc 1.1 was finally approved and released for download yesterday afternoon. For those of you that don’t know about RxCalc, it is a pharmacokinetics calculator made by Apple Core Labs specifically designed to handle aminoglycoside and vancomycin kinetics, i.e. new starts and adjustments. It’s exciting for me because I was involved in the creation of the application. You can read more about what drove the idea and the development of RxCalc here if you’re interested.
    (more…)

  • CPOE – Giving it some thought

    Computerized Provider – or Physician if you like – Order Entry (CPOE) is an older technology that has been in the spotlight for the better part of the past year thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and key components of meaningful use. Because of the “stimulus” offered by ARRA many hospitals across the United States will be gearing up to implement CPOE, ready or not. Currently less than 20% of the hospitals in the United States are using CPOE, and only a small fraction of those are using it for all orders throughout their facility (AJHP. 2008; 65:2244-64).
    (more…)

  • More thoughts on standardization

    I’ve mentioned this before several times on this blog, but feel like I have to say it yet again; we need to start standardizing certain things about health information technology. The lack of standardization reared its ugly head at me again last week when our Pyxis med stations kept dropping medications off of patient’s active profiles. It appeared to always be the same drug, IV ketorolac. It took me a while to figure out the problem, but it turns out that Pyxis and our pharmacy system don’t agree on certain basic elements of time. Go figure.
    (more…)