RxInformatics.com

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.

VentureBeat: "Recognizr uses FaceLib, a mobile face recognition library from Polar Rose, which is available for Android and iPhone. FaceLib can recognize faces in photo or video but, in common with other facial recognition products, is more accurate for photos. Recognizr also uses Polar Rose’s server-side solution FaceCloud because you can’t store profiles of all potential matches in the phone — although recognizing people who are already in the phone’s address book can be handled locally on the device."

The application from Polar Rose combined with the interface from TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) pulls up information associated with the recognized faze from places like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

This weeks cool technology comes by way of a comment left at RxInformatics.com in response to a recent post I wrote on smartphones and pharmacy practice.

The author of the comment, @pillguy, is an iPhone fanboy and pharmacy technology guru.

@pillguy: “The iPhone certainly has some promising applications related to EHRs. Airstrip is one of the coolest I have seen.

The smartphone takes PDAs to the next level with access to realtime information. I can see a TheraDoc, Pharmacy OneSource, or Zynx type clinical monitoring/alerting app fit in with the Airstrip suite nicely.”

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of tablet PCs. In fact, I can’t imagine life without one. The reason why acute care pharmacists haven't adopted the tablet PC platform escapes me. My complete opinion on the matter can be found here.

With the growing need for real-time access to patient data it no longer makes sense to be anchored to a desktop PC at the point-of-care. Couple this with the rapid growth of portable technology and you have a rare opportunity to develop a mobile pharmacy practice in the acute care setting. Whether that model will utilize tablet PCs, UMPCs, WebStations, netbooks or other mobile device remains to be seen.

RTT News: “3M Health Information Systems has released 3M(TM) Mobile Dictation Software, a powerful new application that extends 3M's dictation, transcription, and speech recognition solutions. Available on the BlackBerry(R) or Windows Mobile(R) platforms, the software offers physicians the freedom of using a single device for phone, email, and dictation, and provides "anytime, anywhere" access via Wi-Fi or 3G wireless service. 3M Mobile Dictation is enhanced with a full range of security features that fulfill HIPAA and hospital-specific guidelines for encryption and authentication.” – Developments such as mobile dictation could decrease the turnaround time between the physician's spoken word and a readable document, which is one of the biggest issues with dictated notes. With the popularity of smartphones most physicians will have easy access to timely dictation. In theory that is.

Visit the 3M site for more information.

For those of you that have an iPhone and love data, there is an amazing App called Roambi. You can check it out at http://www.roambi.com/ .

Roambi attempts to take the mundate inanimate data in your excel, crystal reports, or business objects spreadsheet and turn it into stylish data on the run.

I have created a few Roambi files myself. Examples include a BCMA compliance report that shows me scanning compliance per unit in my hospital per month, an outpatient pharmacy volume statistics report, and a detailed med admin compliance report. So far I am very pleased. If you would like to check one of my reports out, please email me chad@rxinformatics.com

A developer of pharmacy iPhone application for pharmacokinetics is looking for some testers.  A nice free PK app is available. See this link:

http://www.applecorelabs.com/blog/2009/07/going-once-going-twice.html

Posted via email from RxDoc.Org

101 Things you can do with a Mobile Phone

Apple is known for the commercial for the iPhone stating “there’s an app for that”. The list of applications for all mobile phones, especially smartphones continues to grow dramatically. Here’s an interesting list from www.mobilehealthcrowd.com .

“Your Next Computer” was the feature article in the October 8, 2008 issue of InformationWeek (www.informationweek.com). This article dealt with the question, “Is the smartphone the new laptop? Can we really ditch our Windows-powered portables when we travel, in favor of BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile or Symbian–powered hand sets?”

Many business professionals are exploring the option of leaving their laptop at home when they travel. If they can lighten their load and still access their company data, customer relationship software and other tools that are needed by the business professional, why not?

If business professionals can use smartphones as tools to increase their time spent with customers, then surely we in healthcare can find a way to help maximize our time and efficiency with our patients. One example of an institution that is way ahead of the technology curve is Doylestown Hospital, a community medical center located near Philadelphia.

The hospitals web site discusses their transition to the use of a smartphone by their physicians in order to gain “access to patient’s vital stats, medical reference applications, and breaking health alerts to provide collaborative and efficient patient care.” The iPhone (www.apple.com/iphone/enterprise/doylestown.html) allowed the physician staff access to the hospital’s electronic medical record system (MEDITECH Client Server 6.0) through the Safari browser, which required secure authentication and provided audit-trail security.