Antibiotics Manual iPad app is a detailed reference resource for Providers

Antibiotics are one of the most important class of medicines used to fight bacterial infections. They can be used to save lives from nearly mortal infections. Like the article that I found says: "Antibiotics find their way into nearly every area of medicine." That is why they should be used properly for a very effective treatment. The article show us a new application for the iPad device called Antibiotics Manual by Spearhead Global Inc, created by two infectious disease physicians from Temple University School of Medicine, which consist of flashcards detailing a particular antimicrobial. The following information are the one that we can found about each antibiotic:

-Basic Characteristics: Mechanism of Action, Mechanism of Resistance, Metabolic Route.
-FDA-Approved Indications
-Side effects/toxicity
-Drug Interactions/Food Interactions
-Dosing
-Special Populations
-The Art of Antimicrobial Therapy

This is a good application to have for us, future pharmacists, to use as a reference in our work. The whole article can be found in the following link:

http://www.imedicalapps.com/2011/10/antibiotics-manual-ipad-app-providers/#more-17847

E-Prescribing and its Advantages

One of the huge advancement in technology for the health care area that we are going to be part is the electronic prescribing (e-prescribing). This is created to simplified the way of prescribing medications to the patient. It is created make the job easy for both the patient and the health care professional.

Ursulla Pennel from EMR Consultant define e-prescribing as an electronic way to generate prescriptions through an automated data-entry process utilizing e-prescribing software and a transmission network which links to participating pharmacies. She also described it as the solution to improve patient safety and reduce sky-rocketing medication costs. It is estimated that approximately 7,000 deaths occur each year in the United States due to medication errors. These errors are predominately due to hand-writing illegibility, wrong dosing, missed drug-drug or drug-allergy reactions. With approximately 3 billion prescriptions written annually, which constitutes one of the largest paper-based processes in the United States, the writing of prescriptions can be streamlined and efficient by using an e-prescribing system.

The use of e-prescribing has many advantages that should help the patient to have a more succesfull treatment and for the health care professional to have a easy way to access and monitor the treatment. Here are some of the advantages that e-prescribing brings:

-Improved patient safety and overall quality of care
-Reduces or eliminates phone calls and call-backs to pharmacies
-Eliminates faxes to pharmacies
-Streamlines the refill's requests and authorization processes
-Increases patient compliance
-Improves Formulary adherence
-Increases patient convenience
-Offers true Provider Mobility
-Improves reporting ability

To read the whole article click the following link:

http://www.emrconsultant.com/education/e-prescribing

Pharmacy Technology: The Future Is Now for Pharmacy Technology

Amanda Baltazar write about the future of the pharmacy profession with the advancement in technology and explain about the popular devices that now we can find in the community pharmacy that we visit. It is a good read to learn about these features that we are going to see in the future as Pharm D's.

A mere 15 years ago, the only pharmacy technology you’d find was a cash register and maybe a pill-counting machine. But a lot has happened since then: Companies have launched new technology and pharmacists and pharmacies have become more accepting of it. Here are some of the most popular devices on the market:

-Robotic Prescription Dispensing Systems
-Central-Fill Systems
-Electronic-prescribing (e-prescribing)
-Telehealth
-Automated Kiosks

You can read the whole article by clicking the following link:

http://pharmacy.about.com/od/Technology/a/Automation-The-Future-Is-Now.htm

RxWorks Suite Solution Revolutionizes Pharmacy Operations

AmerisourceBergen and Franciscan Health System, a network of five hospitals and 650 beds that is headquartered in Tacoma, Washington, partnered to pilot a pharmaceutical supply chain model that would improve hospital pharmacy inventory management, storage, operational efficiency, and medication safety. Using AmerisourceBergen’s RxWorks Suite portfolio of technologies, including dispensing hardware and inventory management software, Franciscan was one of the first hospitals to implement a centralized pharmaceutical fill system in which one hospital receives and processes medication and manages inventory for the entire health system.

This hub-and-spoke fill model increases dispensing and administration safety, decreases inventory costs, and allows key pharmacy staff to be “on the floor” in the hospitals, focusing their efforts on important clinical and patient responsibilities. The health system is also close to fulfilling its goal of bedside, bar-coded medication administration and sees the hub-and-spoke model as the pharmacy distribution method of choice in the future.

The plan called for a total restructuring of Franciscan’s pharmaceutical supply chain process. The existing decentralized fill system, where each hospital received and processed its own medications, was replaced with a centralized fill hub-and-spoke model in which one location served the entire health system. St. Joseph, the largest hospital in the system, was designated as the “hub,” with all the other hospitals acting as “spokes.”

To launch the new model, Franciscan implemented AmerisourceBergen’s RxWorks Suite solution, which includes The FastPak EXP compliance packager with ClinicWorks pharmacy workflow software; FastFind Universal automated storage and retrieval carousels; SupplyWorks inventory management software; and bar-coding stations.

AmerisourceBergen packaged these technologies to streamline the hospital pharmacy medication supply chain process while ensuring that the new automation system would integrate with existing pharmacy hardware.

As one of the first hospitals to implement automation, Franciscan did encounter some initial resistance from pharmacy staff, but stuck to the vision and worked through the challenges. Now, everyone at Franciscan would agree that the struggles were well worth the payoff.

With the health system’s fill process now more than 95% centralized, Franciscan has a markedly safer and more efficient pharmaceutical supply chain process. The new FastFind storage and retrieval carousels have made locating medications easier and more efficient and have reduced the physical space each hospital needs for medication storage.
The medication replacement stock for more than 100 automated dispensing machines’ orders for the entire health system is filled each night by just one or two pharmacy technicians—a job that previously took several hours a day and involved many members of the pharmacy staff at each hospital. Additionally, the automated system has vastly improved inventory management. The health system estimates that in the short time the centralized model has been in effect, it has saved $50,000 in medication inventory costs, a figure it estimates will quickly climb to more than $250,000.

Franciscan has also increased medication safety that the hub-and-spoke model supports. Medication labels are now uniform, streamlined, and easy to read, which reduces the risk of medication errors. Every medication is now distributed with a unique barcode.

Source: U.S. Pharmacist
US Pharm. 2010;35(2):HS-33-HS-34.