Jerry Fahrni

Tag: Pharmacy Technology

  • Quick Hit: Thoughts on NEPS labeling solution for pharmacy

    I wrote about the NEPS labeling solution for pharmacy way back in May of 2009. The product basically extends the functionality of the pharmacy information system by giving users the ability to print custom labels for medications through the use of different fonts, colors, and images. It’s well thought of in certain pharmacy circles. In the hands of the right people NEPS can be an effective way to create some pretty cool labels. In the hands of others it’s a good way to create confusion.
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  • Homegrown medication tracking at Children’s Hospital Boston

    Children’s Hospital Boston is a 395-bed children’s hospital located in the Longwood Medical Center area of Boston Massachusetts. It’s a pretty cool place near Harvard School of Medicine as well as the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences; not to mention that it’s literally right across the street from the famous Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

    I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Children’s Hospital and receiving a grand tour of the pharmacy and all its operations. The Pharmacy Director and IT Pharmacist have a great vision for what can be accomplished with the appropriate use of pharmacy automation and technology. They’re both quite practical about their decisions in this area.

    The pharmacy itself makes great use of technology like the Cerner Pharmacy Information System, carousels, high-speed automated packagers, DoseEdge IV Workflow Management system, as well as a homegrown medication tracking system, which I found fascinating. The medication tracking system has been in use for some time now. Children’s built the system themselves, which makes it all the more impressive. You just don’t see that kind of thing these days.

    The Director of Pharmacy at Children’s Hospital Boston provided me with a link to the YouTube video below. The video shows the nuts and bolts of their medication tracking system. While not detailed, it’ll give you a general idea of what it does.

  • Real-time medication tracking: Pharmtrac.PD by PlusDelta Technologies

    I’ve been revisiting some of the pharmacy technology that I’ve covered over the past few years. Partly to see what advances have been made, if any, and partly to see if some of the smaller guys I’ve come across are still in business.

    PlusDelta Technologies is an interesting little company that I discovered at the ASHP Summer Meeting in Denver in 2011. I was impressed with their vision, and with their use of mobile technology to track medications throughout the distribution process. At the time the company had a small suite of products, but as I sit here looking at their website it appears that they’ve whittled it down to just one: Pharmtrac.PD. Focus people, that’s called focus.
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  • What’s the single most important technology introduced into pharmacy operations in last 10 years?

    I asked this question on Twitter today looking for opinions from the countless number of people roaming the internet. Alas, I received not a single response. Not one. I’m starting to think that Twitter, and most other social media, is worthless as a way of gathering information from people. Oh sure, my Twitter feed is great for consuming an endless string of articles and links, but the few times I’ve actually reached out to the Twittersphere with a question I’ve ended up with bupkis.
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  • Smart prescription bottle to be used in clinical trial for med compliance

    adheretech

    Medical Xpress:

    “Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, a Cornell University college, has been awarded a $100,000 grant from the New York City Economic Development Corp. and Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration for a clinical study to test the effectiveness of the smart pill bottle on drug adherence in HIV-positive patients. It was one of 10 partnerships to win an inaugural PILOT Health Tech NYC grant.

    The smart bottle is made by AdhereTech, a startup firm that licensed the technology from UAH (University of Alabama in Huntsville), which holds an equity position in the company.

    For 12 weeks, the New York trial is scheduled to follow 70 HIV patients with medication compliance difficulties who are being treated at Weill Cornell. Each patient will receive adherence counseling, but only half will also use the smart pill bottles.”

    I first mentioned the AdhereTech bottle back in March of this year. Then I mentioned it again during a presentation that I gave in May at the HIMSS Southern California Chapter 5th Annual Clinical Informatics Summit: Adventures in Clinical Informatics. It’s an interesting piece of technology. I’m curious to see what the outcome of the study shows.

  • Kit Check goes in at CaroMont Regional Medical Center in North Carolina

    PRWeb: “CaroMont Health (formerly Gaston Memorial Hospital) became the first hospital in North Carolina to adopt Kit Check™for hospital pharmacy kit processing.

    CaroMont Regional is a 435-bed, not-for-profit general and acute care facility. Kit Check™ provides cloud-based software that leverages RFID technology to reduce pharmacy kit replenishment from an average of 30 minutes to 3 minutes. CaroMont installed Kit Check™ in mid May and after 10 weeks of operation has already tagged and tracked more than 10,000 medications used in 206 emergency pharmacy kits.”

    I know some pharmacists at CaroMont. They’re good people and are always looking for a way to utilize technology to improve operations.

    I wrote about Kit Check back in January 2012. I’m a big fan of using RFID technology to manage niche items like medication trays. It makes sense to me. Barcoding works, but sometimes it’s just easier to use technology like RFID.

    Is RFID the future of heathcare? I don’t know, my crystal ball recently stopped working. The technology itself is quite mature, but hasn’t really caught on in healthcare. With the advent of smartphones and tablets with built-in NFC technology I have to believe that some innovative company will take the queue and continue to develop the concept.

    Things I’ve written about RFID can be found here.

  • Stanford University Medical Center Pharmacy site visit [07 31 2013]

    I just rolled in the door from Palo Alto, where I spent most of the morning visiting the Stanford University Medical Center inpatient pharmacy. And why not, I didn’t have anything else to do today. I picked up the phone, connected with the Director of Pharmacy, Mike Brown and was on my way.

    First and foremost, the inpatient pharmacy at Stanford is nice. It’s also quiet, which is a bit unusual for a pharmacy servicing such a large facility. Interestingly enough most of the non-IV related medication distribution is handled with the use of very little automation; there’s an interesting story to go along with that.

    The pharmacy at Stanford has a large investigation drug service (IDS) area, which is responsible for handling approximately 300 active drug trials at the moment. Impressive. They use IDS management software called Vestigo integrated with Epic to manage everything. It’s pretty slick.

    My reason for the visit wasn’t for the non-IV medication distribution or IDS, however. What I really wanted to see was their IV room, and the associated distribution process. I’d heard through the grapevine that they were using a product called Phocus Rx to manage their chemotherapy preparation. I wrote about Phocus Rx in March of 2012. I’ve heard a lot about the system over the past year, but had yet to see it action.

    The IV room didn’t disappoint, it was great. They let me change into scrubs, gown up and spend about 90 minutes in the cleanroom watching the pharmacist and technicians run through the process. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like that. It felt good. There was something right about it.

    As far as Phocus Rx goes, in my mind it’s basically a less feature-rich version of DoseEdge (post Feb 2010). Both systems use cameras and software to manage workflow, but that’s about where the similarities end. Phocus Rx uses a different camera setup than DoseEdge, i.e. the camera is located outside the hood versus inside the hood, respectively. The other differences include how information is sent to the IV workflow system, different approaches to barcode scanning, inclusion/exclusion of clinical decision support tools, and their inclusion/exclusion of gravimetric analysis for dose verification. Phocus Rx is “considerably less expensive” than DoseEdge, although the exact dollar figures remain a mystery. Which one is better? Impossible to say. That question is completely subjective and depends on your needs.

    The visit was interesting, and eye opening. The pharmacy personnel in the cleanroom were courteous, professional, and quite knowledgeable about the system. It was impressive to watch. I also learned a lot, which I will now add to my ever expanding personal database of IV room technology.

  • Swisslogs introduces next-gen RoboCurrier Autonomous Mobile Robot

    Swisslog has been making these little robots for a long time, although I don’t see many of them in the wild these days.

    They’re pretty cool in their own right. The robots themselves are reasonably small. The previous version was only 35-inches tall, and weighed in around 100 pounds. But they could carry up to 50 pounds worth of cargo and could navigate around the hospital completely on autopilot. I’m not entirely sure, but I believe they use RFID technology to navigate.

    [Update 08 01 2013]: According to Swisslog the RoboCurrier “utilizes an obstacle avoidance system and mapping software that’s set up during installation“.

    One of the coolest features though is use of a prerecorded message to announce its arrival.
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  • Cool i.v. room technology – Drugcam Assist

    [Update 12/22/2013: I received an email from one of the inventors/developers of Drugcam software informing me of a new website that contains more information about the system. The site is eurekam.fr, which contains pages describing both Drugcam Assist and Drugcam Control. It’s still not a great amount of information, but at least it’s more than I had.]

    I’ve talked about technology for the i.v. room extensively on this weblog. It’s no secret that I think the i.v. room is the next frontier for pharmacy technology. The reason I think this is simple, the i.v. room is dangerous, and precious few healthcare systems are using technology to its fullest in that environment.

    I’m not the only one that thinks the i.v. room is important. As of December of 2012 I knew of basically four i.v. room workflow management systems: DoseEdg DoseEdge by Baxa, Pharm-Q In The Hood by Envision Telepharmacy, SP Central Telepharmacy System by ScriptPro, and Phocus Rx by Grifols.

    Joining the fray are at least two more systems that I saw at the ASHP Summer Meeting just last week: Cato software, which is now owned by DB, and Drugcam Assist by Getinge. Unfortunately you won’t find much about Drugcam Assist online, which is really too bad because it’s an amazing system. The website offers more information and a video demonstration for those that are willing to fill out a form and register. I was not willing.

    Drugcam Assist
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  • Evolution of [Pharmacy] Practice in an Age of Information [Presentation]

    Yesterday I was at Children’s Hospital of Orange County in Orange, CA. for the HIMSS Southern California Chapter 5th Annual Clinical Informatics Summit: Adventures in Clinical Informatics. I was there to give a presentation about pharmacy. It’s the first public presentation I’ve given since retiring from the presentation game just over two years ago. Now that it’s over I’m heading back into presenter retirement.

    The presentation in its entirety has been uploaded to Slideshare and is embedded below. Some of the slides didn’t show up at the time of upload. I tried a couple of different things to get them to show up, but at last view they still weren’t there.