North Dakota Company Recieves Federal Grant for Telepharmacy Research

The United States Department of Agriculture awarded a company involved in starting the North Dakota Telepharmacy Project $80,000 in grant money to research Telepharmacy, reports the Storm Center Blog out of North Dakota:

Evidence shows MTM reduces the use of unnecessary physician and hospital services by reducing adverse health events and in the end total health costs. Research under this grant will be conducted with pharmacies across North Dakota to determine a model for the delivery of MTM services to remote pharmacies.

The results of the research will be used to expand the Telepharmacy Project there.

Telepharmacy system for remote supervision of pharmacy technicians in hospital decreases likelihood of medication errors, increases safety of process

The culmination of some telepharmacy work out of Kansas, finally published, highlighted earlier by this blog! An article in the newest AJHP details an interesting usage of telepharmacy:

Summary. Telepharmacy hardware and software were acquired, and an inspection camera was placed in a biological safety cabinet to allow the pharmacy technician to take digital photographs at various stages of the chemotherapy preparation process. Once the pharmacist checks the medication vials’ agreement with the work label, the technician takes the product into the biological safety cabinet, where the appropriate patient is selected from the pending work list, a queue of patient orders sent from the pharmacy information system. The technician then scans the bar code on the vial. Assuming the bar code matches, the technician photographs the work label, vials, diluents and fluids to be used, and the syringe (before injecting the contents into the bag) along with the vial. The pharmacist views all images as a part of the final product-checking process. This process allows the pharmacist to verify that the correct quantity of medication was transferred from the primary source to a secondary container without being physically present at the time of transfer.

Conclusion. Telepharmacy and bar coding provide a means to improve the accuracy of chemotherapy preparation by decreasing the likelihood of using the incorrect product or quantity of drug. The system facilitates the reading of small product labels and removes the need for a pharmacist to handle contaminated syringes and vials when checking the final product.

Sounds promising -- and a great new method of lowering medication errors in the absence of a pharmacist, as well as costs in pharmacies, though if you've been reading this blog for a while, you know remote verification of pharmacy technician work in hospitals via telecommunications isn't entirely new.

VA hints at retail telepharmacies for rural Alaskans

In a press release issued by the senior US Senator from Alaska, Lisa Murkowski, Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, spoke at a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Veterans Affairs Subcommittee and responded to questions about the VA's future approach to delivering prescription health benefits to veterans in rural areas of the state:

Cross said the VA could help Alaska through “outreach clinics,” such as those slated for Juneau and Homer, and rural health initiatives, including telemedicine programs and prescription deliveries by mail so that veterans don’t have to visit a pharmacy.

“We have much to learn and much innovation to bring forward in regard to our veterans in Alaska and we look forward to working on that,” he said.

Considering that the VA has a good idea of what telepharmacy can offer, and the head of the VA is testifying that this is more or less what they have in mind to the Senators who are going to appropriate the money, it's a good bet it will happen.

Retail Minnesota Telepharmacy up and running

An update on the Minnesota town, Adrian who got their retail pharmacy back in the form of a Telepharmacy, serviced from another town's pharmacy:

After over a year of planning and paperwork Adrian will once again have a pharmacy on Maine Street. Sterling Drug will be opening its telepharmacy in the Government Building on Tuesday, June 2.

This comes from Krisine Kern out of the Nobles County Review. According to a PDF on their website, it looks like telepharmacy equipment provider ScriptPro supplied the equipment (pdf).