Jerry Fahrni

Blog

  • 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”

  • Is the 30-minute rule for medication administration good or bad?

    The June 17, 2010 issue of ISMP Medication Safety Alert I received has an interesting article on the unintended negative consequences of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation requiring medications to be administered within 30 minutes of their scheduled dosing time. I’m sure that the CMS 30-minute rule was created with good intentions in mind, but in reality it creates a lot of anxiety and bad habits. According to the ISMP article, the CMS 30-minute rule “may be causing unintended consequences that adversely affect medication safety. While following the 30-minute rule may be important to hospitals, many nurses find it difficult to administer medications to all their assigned patients within the 30-minute timeframe. This sometimes causes nurses to drift into … unsafe work habits.” Those unsafe work habits include removing meds from automated dispensing cabinets (ADC) for multiple patients at once, removing meds ahead of time, falsifying documentation to meet the 30-minute rule and preparing doses ahead of time; all dangerous practices.
    (more…)

  • Happy 4th of July

    Ah, the 4th of July. Independence Day. The day in 1776 when the Continental Congress gave Great Britain the finger and declared that the thirteen American colonies were no longer a part of the British Empire. America was born.

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

    Well said. In addition, the 4th of July is a time for celebration with family and friends to include eating lots of BBQ, ice cream, potato salad and so on. It’s also a time to enjoy the beauty of fireworks lighting up the night.

    Have fun everyone and try not to get carried away. On second thought, don’t worry about getting carried away. Just have fun and be safe.

  • “What’d I miss?” – Week of June 27

    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.
    (more…)

  • Cool Technology for Pharmacy – NDC Translator

    Last week I posted about some bar-coding troubles we were having. One of the comments regarding the information in the post was left by a pharmacist named Max Peoples. Max offered up some great information and mentioned a piece of software called NDC Translator from RxScan.

    From Max’s comment: “One answer to the medication NDC # barcode scanning problem is to use the software called NDC Translator(TM) with your barcode scanners. Information at http://www.rxscan.com/rx.shtml

    It intercepts the raw data coming from the barcode scanner, evaluates it’s content and if it contains the 10 digit NDC # (required to be there by law in a medication barcode) it converts the raw data into the 11 digit NDC # format and then sends the 11 digit NDC over to the application you are scanning into, in this case Jerry’s barcode labeling software.”
    (more…)

  • Lose your iPhone? No worries with Find My iPhone for the iPad

    Mark Neuenschwander (@hospitalrx) turned me on to this app: Find My iPhone for the iPad.

    The application allows you to locate your iPhone, send an audible and/or text message to your iPhone, remotely lock your iPhone or remotely “Wipe” your iPhone via the comforts of your iPad. Pretty slick.
    (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…)

  • Top blog posts and searches from last week (26)

    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 – I said almost a disastrous mishap people, almost. Bloodthirsty savages.
    2. Quick Hit – Mobile devices in our pharmacy – This post elicited a couple of interesting comments.
    3. Best iPhone / iPod Touch Applications for Pharmacists
    4. 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 June 18, 2009 and covered Alaris Smartpumps.
    5. 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 September 10, 2009 and covered the capsule machine. I wonder what brought on the interest?
    6. Medscape Mobile for the BlackBerry – Still going strong.
    7. Pediatric labels for bar code medications – I need to update this post. We’ve come along way since then.
    8. We need a better system for medication reconciliation
    9. 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 August 6, 2009 and talked about ROBOT-Rx from McKesson.
    10. Motion J3500 gets a wicked update – The Motion J3500 is a very nice machine. We use the J3400 in our pharmacy and I like it a lot. The more I use it the better it becomes.

    Top searchterm phrases used over the past 7 days:

    1. “cloud computing”
    2. “black cloud” – What do you think people are looking for when they search for “black cloud”?
    3. “ rfid for outpatient medication reconciliation”
    4. “xt2“
    5. “alaris iv pump“
    6. “mckesson robot rx“
    7. “www.pharmacyideas.com“
    8. “alaris pump“
    9. “alaris“
    10. “mak and medication administration” – MAK is the branded name for Siemens BCMA system.

  • Personal vesus professional social media, where’s the line for you?

    Earlier this week @ASHPOfficial tweeted “Where should pharmacists draw the line at social networking? Protect your professional reputation and get tips for safety and privacy in the Summer issue of ASHP InterSections.”  The tweet included a link that took me to Facebook where I found another link to an article in ASHP Intersections Summer 2010 about pharmacy and social media; nothing unusual about that. I’ve read the article before and it contains some pretty good information. With that said, I did find it odd that ASHP was pointing pharmacists toward Facebook to retrieve professional information. It got me thinking about Facebook and where the professional line-in-the-sand between professional and personal social media should be drawn for pharmacists.
    (more…)