Defenselink Article I worked with the Military Health System on the CHCS II project when I was a Pharmacy Officer in the Navy. It was a great concept, but the GUI was very slow at the time. I am not sure how AHLTA inter-relates with CHCS II, but it is great news. I look forward to learning more about the system in the coming months. The devil is in the details....

McKesson APS: PACMED™ Multi-Dose Packaging Technology

Pre-filling Medications

This kind of operation always leaves me with questions. I am curious to know how many return to stocks the pharmacy ends up doing with this type of process. Some patients do not pick their meds up even when they call it in themselves. I am not sure a reminder will help.
I would like to see a simple time study analysis that takes into consideration the time it takes to fill and return those prescriptions to stock the patient forgets to pick up. Of course, we would compare this to the current baseline and add in any gain in business for consumer convenience.

PDAs Expected to Change Health Care in Future Interesting, especially when Sony has stopped developing and manufacturing its PDA line in the US, and Palm has decided to allow Windows Mobile onto its hardware platform. I really think the PDA is just a bit too small to be of any real use.... We have to come to the realization that these devices are not going to be good for inputting information (at current technology), but tools for reading and interpreting.... It is a great concept, but a bit too big to lug around in the hospital on rounds and not quite user friendly enough to write SOAP notes on. After all, one of the major issues is handwriting and transcription errors.

Asteres Products:

As a continuation of previous posts, here is what KioskMarketplace rates as the best of the bunch.

These are some of the machines the California State Board of Pharmacy has given provisional status to. This will present some interesting competition to Automation companies that provide Bin Management solutions. There are others in the market, but the Kiosk just seems like a double benefit.