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Last weekend HIMSS sponsored a pharmacy symposium the day before all of the other festivities. Here is a brief summary and links to the PPTs.

First, thanks goes out to Michael McGregory PharmD, MBA for Chairing the event.  I had the honor and privilege to serve with him on the planning committee. 

First up was the Opening Keynote Address: Incorporating Evidence into Decision Making by the wonderful Anne Bobb.  For those of you that do not know her, she is a informatics pro from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, but hails from the Great State of Maine.  She had the best line, not only of the day, but of the entire HIMSS week.  Here is a Tweet that was ReTweeted many times through out the week. It only got better from there as she outlined the awesome evidence of CPOE and other interventions with pearls along the way.

Btw, I was live tweeting throughout the day. For a view of what caught my attention during the events check out my Twitter stream that has the hash tag #himss10

 We then had a joint session with our Nursing colleagues for a romp around the medication use process and informatic interventions, entitled Multi-Disciplinary Joint Session: Medication Process, Closing the Loop

At Lunch Krista Pedley PharmD, MS, CDR, USPHS gave a HRSA Update. (most acronyms I have ever used in a sentence)  The slides are not available on the HIMSS site (must be a government thing or that "Hail to Allah" slide<just kidding>) HRSA is doing some incredible things for the profession of pharmacy.  They do not get enough press.  "Hi I am from the goverment, and I am here to help."  They really mean it! Very impressive.

Stan Kent, former ASHP Board member and DoP/VP at Northshore University Health System talked about Medication Reconciliation and Continuity of Care.  If there is a more complicated process in health care, I do not know what it is.  Here is a blog post on an interesting point he made about pharmacist verification, opps Perfection, that I think has profound implications for a new pharmacist practice model.

Holly Lilly, an emerging star in pharmacy informatics, consultant and Adjunct Faculty member in the ASHPFoundation Pharmacy Leadership Academy talked on Medication System Implementation Challenges: Fitting a Round Peg into a Square Hole.  Topics included Oncology, Normalized Dosing, Pediatric Weight Dosing, CDS, Dose Range Checking, Rounding Logic, HCPCS Codes, Order Sets, Smart Pumps, phewww, I am getting tired just thinking about it.  Nice Job.

Sandra Fisher, Pharmacy Informatics Specialist from Richmond, VA gave a presentation on Easing the Medication Information System Transition from Implementation to Maintenance.  If you are implementing any system, check this ppt out.  A number of implementation pearls are presented.

Lastly, I did not attend the closing session because: (a) Since I profoundly disagree with the speaker's view on the Eric Cropp travesty, how could his crystal ball be accurate?  He has free choice on his views.  My choice was not to attend his presentation.  (b) The gold medal Olympic hockey game was happening at the same time.  Still deciding which reason was the real one.  His presentation was Pharmacy Practice and Informatics - What Does the Future Hold?

A good time was had by all at the annual pharmacy informatics get together, organized by Kevin Marvin!  Hope to see you all next year.