New for Your iPhone

Here’s a study out of the UK regarding the assessment of infant pain that I thought was worth mentioning. The researchers evaluated pain assessment with a behavioral tool (the premature infant pain profile) to see if they reflected cortical pain responses in 12 infants on 33 occasions when blood was collected from the heel, and found that pain can be processed on the cortical level without being reflected in infant behavior.

For those of you who are enamored with your iPhone or iPod touch, you now have a good excuse to take it into the office — Epocrates RX software is now available for the iPhone OS, and it’s a freebie. The tool provides both adult and pediatric dosing and you can receive a variety of drug information updates for free as well. It does require a minimum of OS version 2.0, 8 MB + 20K per free health plan formulary selected, and you have to be enabled for wireless updates. I don’t know how different this program is from the one provided for Palm, Windows, or Blackberry phone systems, but if there’s anyone out there who has already tried it please leave some feedback. Inquiring minds want to know…

Not to beat the Dennis Quaid issue to pieces (or to put a damper on the iPhone news), but there has been a statement by the Corpus Christi hospital in which 17 infants received an overdose of heparin earlier this summer. The hospital involved, Christus Spohn, says that the overdose was caused by an error in the mixing process, and not a result of product labeling/packaging, and the Wall Street Journal has followed up their findings with an article discussing just how useful computer physician order entry might be with regard to reducing problems like dosing errors and drug mixups. The moral of the story is that there’s just no way to remove the possibility of human error in the near future. We are still obligated to look for ways to improve.

Interestingly, WSJ is also reporting on changes in the pharma industryregarding aggressive direct-to-consumer advertizing campaigns as a result of hounding by Representative John Dingell (D-Michigan).

Finally, I’ll leave you with a reason not to bother reading the label of calcium-fortified Lactaid. The video is as much a study of human nature as it is a demonstration of an unappetizing food product — the guy complains about the milk’s appearance vociferously, then turns around and tastes it. And guess what? He’s grossed out. Whodathunkit?