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.â€Â 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.
Social Technology
What type of techie are you?
Technology is a funny thing. It’s as diverse as it is interesting. Like many other disciplines, the field of pharmacy technology offers a host of options for pretty much every taste. And not everyone considers all types of pharmacy technology interesting, which has become abundantly clear to me as I continue to meet more professionals in my field.
My opinions on certain key pharmacy and automation technologies are clearly in conflict with many of my friends and colleagues. It’s an odd thing being in the minority and it can drive someone to think their ideas are wrong. However, after serious consideration I realized that the main difference between many of my colleagues and myself is that I tend to be drawn toward hardware based technology while they are drawn toward software technology and regulatory affairs. While it’s true that I like playing with certain types of software, in general it doesn’t have much to offer. Thinking about how to make a piece of software easier to use might be interesting, but if you really think about it that is a gray area between software and hardware, i.e. user interface not necessarily software functionality. That’s probably some type of human engineering discipline to be sure, but I don’t have an official term. And let’s face it, regulatory affairs is simply boring. It’s a necessary evil in healthcare as every governmental agency thinks they need to regulate pharmacy and medicine with more rules then you can shake a stick at, but there really isn’t a while lot you can do with it besides learn it and use it.
A little Saturday morning fun with Wordle
Wordle is a neat little online application that allows you to make word clouds. All you do is enter a bunch of words or the URL to your favorite site and boom, you get a fancy word cloud to call your own. Â The word clouds change every time you do it, but every once in a while you get a keeper. I just think it’s cool.
Hey, I’m a year old today!
This blog was started one year ago today. During that time I’ve learned a great deal about a great many things and have met some incredibly interesting people along the way. The site doesn’t generate much traffic, which just goes to show you that pharmacists are an interesting group that rarely crawl out of their comfort zone. To date not a single pharmacist that I work with is even aware that this blog exists. I’ve had one nurse and one person from the Quality Assurance department at Kaweah reach out to me about something I’ve posted, but that’s it; funny.
Monday morning musings
For some, weekends are a good time to sit around and relax. I tend to do that in the early morning hours of the weekends because the house is quiet and it doesn’t take away from any of the activities that happen during the “normal hours”. It gives me time to catch up on things that I like to do; surf the net and read articles.
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.
Update ASHP #Midyear2009
Today was a good day for informatics at ASHP Midyear. Pharmacy 2.0: How the Web is Changing How We Practice This was a great session moderated by John Poikonen (@poikonen), PharmD or RxInformatics.com. John defined Pharmacy 2.0 as the combination of ASHP’s practice model, participatory medicine, health reform, and self-reform, i.e. changing the way you … Read more
Update ASHP #Midyear2009
The first, and most interesting, session I attended today was “Integrating Technology to Improve Medication-Use Patient Safetyâ€. The session was sponsored by Hospira and consisted of three separate speakers covering areas of the medication–use process where breakdowns typically occur. The focus was on closed-loop medication administration. I’m sure there are different opinions on what closed-loop medication administration is, but for our purposes it consists of orders from the time written until the medication is administered to the patient. Many technologies were discussed, including computerized provider order entry (CPOE), bar code medication administration (BCMA), intelligent infusion devices (IIDs), and electronic medication records (EMRs) among others.
“What’d I miss?” – Week of November 15th
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.
Twitter vs. RSS Reader … who cares.
I’ve been following an interesting debate about the benefits of Twitter versus RSS readers like Google Reader. The debate started with a question posed by Robert Scoble on friendfeed and spilled over into several blogs; siliconANGLE, louisgray.com, Scobleizer and Newsome.Org.
I love reading stuff like this because you can see the passion that everyone has for their little corner of the technology world. It’s even more interesting when you consider that it’s a completely personal choice. Boxers or briefs, who gives a crap as long as you’re comfortable.