Jerry Fahrni

Tag: Drug information

  • IntelliDose EHR integration

    CMIO: “Allscripts will integrate IntrinsiQ’s IntelliDose chemotherapy management tool into its EHR product suite as a new offering for physician practices.

    The Waltham, Mass.-based IntrinsiQ’s IntelliDose calculates and tracks the administration of chemotherapy treatments and will enable Allscripts’ multi-specialty and oncology clients to manage oncology patient care workflow, according to the company.

    Under the agreement, oncology practices will work with Allscripts account managers to coordinate with implementation and training specialists from the IntelliDose team. Integration of IntelliDose into Allscripts tools will enable Allscripts clients to select the add-on program to navigate patient records across both systems, IntrinsiQ stated. “

    This sounds like an interesting concept. I tried looking for detailed information on IntelliDose, but really couldn’t find much. Based on information at the IntrinsiQ website it appears that IntelliDose is a clinical decision support system designed specifically for chemotherapy. Based on the description, IntelliDose does many of the same things that a pharmacy information system does, i.e. checks for “body surface area limitations, patient allergies, and exceptional lab results” in addition to reviewing “dosage variables such as ideal weight, serum creatinine, and creatinine clearance.” Sounds like a pharmacist.

  • Medscape Mobile for the BlackBerry

    Medscape has been around for quite some time. In fact it was one of the first online communities offering specific information for pharmacists. I started using it sometime around 1997. It hadn’t been around for long at that time, but the content was well done.

    I received an email last week introducing the availability of Mobile Medscape for the BlackBerry; it was previously available for the iPhone and iPod touch.

    According to the email:

    > FASTER & LARGER Drug Reference
    Look up info in seconds for 7,000+ prescription and over-the-counter (OTC) brands and generics, including herbals and supplements.

    > FASTER Interaction Checker
    Quickly check interactions between drugs, herbals, and supplements – input as many drug combinations as you want.

    > IN-DEPTH Medical News
    Review the latest medical news in your specialty right in the app – news updated daily across 30 specialty areas.

    > EASIER Navigation
    Our app is designed to make it easier to look up and save drug information, read medical news, and access features.

    The application is completely free and can be found at www.medscape.com/blackberry.

    I think it’s great that Medscape Mobile is available for the BlackBerry now, but I have to wonder what the demand for such an application will be with so many physicians, nurses and pharmacists going to the iPhone. It would be interesting to see the download numbers for Medscape Mobile for each platform.

    More information on the general content of Medscape Mobile can be found here.

  • Quick Hit – Time to change the way healthcare information is disseminated

    I spend a fair amount of time reading various medical, pharmacy and technology journals. Why? That’s a very good question. I was taught in pharmacy school that you need to read a host of journals every week to stay up to date on current trends for the betterment of your knowledge base and the patients you care for. So like any self-respecting pharmacist that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 13 years.

    With that said, my view of the medical literature is starting to change. The information in journals today is out of date by the time it’s published. This is especially true when it comes to any journal articles related to technology. A recent conversation with a friend and colleague verified this when he mentioned that much of his research findings could take as long as a year to grace the pages of a journal. That’s just plain crazy. If advancing technology has taught us one thing it’s that no one should have to wait a year to become better informed.
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  • Rxplore: a new way to explore medication side effects visually

    Journal of Biomedical Informatics

    Abstract:
    Patients on multiple medications are at increased risk for adverse drug events. While physicians can reduce this risk by regularly reviewing the side-effect profiles of their patients’ medications, this process can be time-consuming. We created a decision support system designed to expedite reviewing potential adverse reactions through information visualization. The system includes a database containing 16,340 unique drug and side-effect pairs, representing 250 common medications. A numeric score is assigned to each pair reflecting the strength of association between drug and effect. Based on these scores, the system generates graphical adverse reaction maps for any user-selected combination of drugs. A study comparing speed and accuracy of retrieving side-effect data using this tool versus UpToDate demonstrated a 60% reduction in time to complete a query (61 s vs. 155 s, p < 0.0001) with no decrease in accuracy. These findings suggest that information visualization can significantly expedite review of potential adverse drug events. – J Biomed Inform. 2010 Apr;43(2):326-3

    The visual support tool mentioned in the abstract above is called Rxplore and was developed by Jon D. Duke, M.D., a medical informatics fellow at the Regenstrief Institute and the Indiana University School of Medicine.
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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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  • DynaMed – an evidence based medicine point of care tool

    Our facility is running a trial of  DynaMed, “an evidence based medicine point-of-care” database. It reminds me of UpToDate.

    From the DynaMed site:

    • According to the National Academy Press (2001) 44-98,000 American deaths per year occur due to preventable medical errors; medical errors are estimated to cost the U.S. $17 to $29 billion annually
    • Using the “best available evidence” for clinical decision-making improves health outcomes and reduces health care costs
    • Busy clinicians use “fast and easy” resources expected to answer most of their questions instead of resources designed to provide the best current evidence
    • Clinicians sometimes turn to textbooks and online resources with substantial breadth, but these resources do not use the best available evidence
    • Physicians and other health care professionals need a resource where they can reliably answer most questions quickly and accurately (i.e., with the best available evidence)

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  • Pillbox – a website for tablet/capsule identification

    The National Library of Medicine has a website know as Pillbox beta that allows anyone to use various identifiers on a tablet or capsule, i.e. imprint, shape, color, size and/or scoring, to quickly identify a medication. I’ve used systems like this many times for the emergency department when a patient would roll in the door with ten different medications all thrown together in a plastic baggie. The nurse would bring them to the pharmacy and say “I need you to tell me what these are”. I tried holding the baggie to my head like the Great Carnac on Carson, but most of the time I had to use other references to help me out.


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  • “What’d I miss?” – Week of January 17th

    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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  • Year end thoughts for 2009

    2009 brought many new and exciting changes not only in my personal life, but in the world of pharmacy and technology as well. I’ve learned many new things, gained some skills previously absent from my armamentarium, met some great new people, discovered the “real” internet for the first time, traveled more than ever before, discovered I don’t know diddly squat about a great many things, and am more excited about the next year than I can remember in recent history.

    Below is a list of opinions about a great many things that I have seen and done over the past year. Some are pharmacy related, some are technology related, some are personal, and some are just random thoughts.
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  • Lexi-Comp medical references for the Droid

    Recently I was fortunate enough to be a beta tester for the new Android version of Lexi-Comp’s suite of medical information software. I was very excited for the opportunity as I’ve been using what I would consider inferior drug information resources since purchasing my Droid about a month ago. The installation was a problem initially as the databases wouldn’t install directly to the microSD card on the Droid. As you can imagine, the databases are large and immediately filled up the physical memory on the device. Within a couple of weeks of reporting the problem to Lexi-Comp they had corrected the issue and sent me a new build that installed seamlessly.
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