1) Personal Use
2) Professional / Marketing/ Busienss Development / Cioomunications Use
3) Education
"Those are the three evolutions of web 2.0," says John Poikonen, PharmD, clinical informatics director of the UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester, MA.
Hospital pharmacy information technology (IT) professionals typically have a wide range of duties that may include all three domains.
"Their work ranges from keeping the drug database up-to-date to providing clinical content into the pharmacy and hospital systems and providing clinical decision support for the hospital system," Poikonen says. "There's a wide range of duties these folks do, but clearly there's a specialized new role within the profession."
Here are some ways pharmacists can improve their use of web technology:
1. Create a web presence.
Hospitals and pharmacists should take the first step of creating a web presence for themselves, suggests Todd Eury, executive director of Pharmacy Technology Resource, a consulting team that helps pharmacies and is based in Pittsburgh, PA. Eury also is the acting director of sales for KeyCentrix Inc. of Wichita, KS.
"You can have an electronic presence through either a web site or a blog," Eury says. "Blogging is a lot more interactive than a static web site."
Also, health system pharmacies can keep in touch with their customers through information they want to market, such as adverse reactions to drugs, H1N1 outbreaks, flu vaccine clinic times, public educational sessions on medications for the elderly, etc., Eury says.
"Communicating this traditionally means you have to hire an ad agency and stuff a bunch of envelopes," Eury says.
"The electronic age has made these communications 10 times faster than the traditional communication methods," he adds. "And they're much more creative because you can quickly advocate a message to followers or customers by allowing them to know that this new communication is available through this web site or blog or in the world of social networking."
2. Inform the public through the web.
Hospital pharmacists and pharmacy informatics directors also have a role to play in informing the public about medications and disease processes, working to make certain accurate information rises to the top.
"There's a lot of bad information out there, and I think that's where the Internet gets consumers in trouble," says Jerry Fahrni, PharmD, IT pharmacist at Kaweah Delta, a 530-bed hospital and health care system in Visalia, CA.
"When you go looking for information you need to make sure your source is credible," Fahrni adds. "At times I will leave comments on web sites that have correct information, or I'll say, 'You can go here to find information.'"
Through blogs or Twitter or Facebook postings, pharmacists can inform the public.
Fahrni has a blog at www.jerryfahrni.com in which he posts information about health care and new technology. There are about 300 unique hits per day on his blog, Fahrni says.
Web social media weakens the old tradition of verifying facts and sourcing information, Eury notes.
Pharmacists need to verify their own information through published literature and reputable sources, Eury says.
"When I publish something it's hitting my network first before it reaches a publication, and I had better be sure for the purpose of my reputation that it's accurate," he adds.
3. Protect your web reputation.
Too few people, including pharmacy students, treat their web reputations with the sensitivity and caution that's necessary for their careers.
For instance, the reputation pharmacists created for themselves while teenagers can come back to haunt them in their professional years because nothing goes away once it's published on-line, Eury says.
"Parents of kids between the ages of 15 and 19 are blind to what their children are doing to their e-reputation," he says. "I'll groom my children to watch what they say on the web."
Fahrni teaches his daughters that whatever they put on-line cannot be erased.
"You can delete it off the web site or e-mail, but it's still there," he says. "So you should never put anything on the Internet that you would not say to someone personally or show to your Mom."
Pharmacy students tend to believe their personal lives are separate from their professional lives, but they are not, he adds.
"Once you reach the level of being a professional, a pharmacist, a lawyer, a doctor, the personal and professional lives are never separated," Fahrni says. "You're in the public eye if you're on the Internet."
The e-footprint pharmacy students have today will follow them decades from now, he adds.
"What if I wanted to know about a particular pharmacist and I Google him or her and what if five years ago this person published a picture of him or herself downing a couple of beers?" Eury says. "If I have a choice of going to Walgreens or the independent pharmacy where this person works, then I might choose Walgreens because of this photo."
The comments pharmacists make on-line, the photos they publish, the politics they debate, the private life details they reveal all can come back to haunt them years after these are no longer relevant.
"You have to start minding good manners and develop a good e-reputation," Eury says.
Without a good reputation on the web, pharmacists might not be trusted by the public they're trying to reach, he adds.
4. Increase your knowledge base through the web.
Eury predicts that print medical journals, along with newspapers, will go the route of horse and carts within the next decade. All published research will be on the web, and it will be dynamic like Wikipedia with content added and corrected continuously.
"There will be no such thing as a published medical journal 10 years from now," Eury says. "And the reason is because of how fast you can update research today compared with 10 years ago."
When a study is published for a new drug, by the time it's in print there might be additional research showing additional adverse events. This information would have to wait months longer before being published in print, he explains.
But with electronic journals, changes, footnotes, additional information can be posted almost immediately.
"Electronic journals will be ongoing dynamic clinical evaluation and study," Eury says. "They'll be 100% dynamic, and they'll be subscription-based."
Also, through existing electronic media, including social networks, pharmacists can find out about new Congressional bills even before the news is published in the paper, he says.
When Eury learns of something new like this, he attaches it to a Twitter message and soon the information is spread large and wide.
"Pharmacists, information technology directors, and others are becoming my news," he says. "And I'm getting the news so much faster today."
