Jerry Fahrni

Tag: Data

  • Collecting, collating and connecting information

    I am a digital pack rat. It’s better than being a pack rat in the physical world I suppose, but it definitely causes problems. I collect information at an alarming rate, which isn’t a problem in and of itself, but it creates problems when I want to use the information that I’ve collected. It’s stored in various places via a host of methods that I’ve devised over the years to make it easy to use; in theory anyway.

    Searching for information isn’t a problem, Google places the sea of information on the internet a click away, and Windows 8 offers a fair desktop search engine. No, finding information isn’t an issue. However, sorting and connecting the information in a logical way is.
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  • What report service/software does your pharmacy use?

    I wrote about Pandora back in December 2009. It was a great piece of software back in the day.

    I remember a time when nearly everyone in pharmacy that used Pyxis ADC’s to control their medication distribution at nursing units also used Pandora to generate reports, look at data, and detect controlled substance diversion. The two simply went hand in hand. If you had Pyxis, you used Pandora.

    Pandora was acquired by Omnicell a few years ago, and since that time it’s popularity appears to have declined. Maybe it’s just my imagination, but it sure feels that way. I talk to a lot of pharmacy personnel, and recently it appears that pharmacies are starting to use solutions other than Pandora.

    Carefusion’s Knowledge Portal seems to be a popular response these days when I question people about their metrics, reports and analytics. I suppose that makes sense when you consider that a majority of hospitals in the U.S. use Pyxis ADC’s, which we all know are made by Carefusion.

    Perhaps the acquisition of Pandora by Omnicell had something to do with it. Maybe my cross section is skewed. Who knows. This will be something that I will pay close attention to over the next several months. I’ll think I’ll add this to my list of standard questions when I visit pharmacies.

    Data is important, and becoming more important by the day. Whoever has the best solution wins.