pharmacy TECHNOLOGY products

Amerinet Decision Rx

Amerinet (St. Louis, Mo) recentlyintroduced Amerinet Decision Rx, a 3-component program that provides memberswith tools to help them make educatedpharmacy supply chain decisions.The Amerinet Pharmacy Price Managementtool helps health care providersbetter time their pharmacy purchasesand verify historical pricing. This tool isavailable to Amerinet members as part ofthe on-line member resources and canbe accessed via ValuSource. Data areavailable in the form of historical pricingreports, current pricing reports, futurepricing reports, and price change reports.The Amerinet Pharmacy Price Auditingcomponent is a daily price-auditing toolthat is powered by AccuPrice. Offeredthrough Amerinet's subsidiary Diagnostix,AccuPrice is a proprietary software toolthat quickly identifies and resolves pricingerrors.This tool reviews daily purchases toensure that members are receiving accuratepricing from the supplier. The programreturns a report via e-mail to theparticipating facility outlining the numberof invoices, the number of lines, unfavorablevariances, favorable variances, anditems not on file. The Amerinet PharmacyOptimization component provides toolsto identify lost contract pricing opportunities,manage and track rebates, maximizemarket share and tier pricing, andmeasure product, manufacturer, andwholesaler order fill rates. For more information,visit www.amerinet-gpo.com, orcall 800-388-2638.

Étage 4

bioMérieux Inc(Durham, NC) recentlyintroduced the fourthperformance level Étage4 for its STELLERA ClinicalIntervention andPatient Monitoring software.The STELLERA systemprovides knowledge-enriched, infectiousdisease-specific recommendationsto clinicians for medication treatmentmanagement. The availability of Étage 4completes bioMérieux Inc's suite ofIntelligent Patient Therapy SoftwareSystems and allows the clinician to capturea more comprehensive view of thepatient, avoiding potential medicationerrors and reducing the chances of costlyadverse drug events (ADEs). STELLERAÉtage 4 integrates the VITEK bacterialidentification and antibiotic susceptibility/resistance system and the laboratoryresults with patient medication profilesto enable the pharmacist and clinician tomake faster and more accurate treatmentdecisions for the patient. The availabilityof this real-time information allowsclinicians to rapidly match the identifiedbacteria to the most effective antibiotic(s). The Étage 4 level of functionalityprovides 90 predefined automatedalerts, including medication errors andpotential ADEs, as well as drug levelmonitoring and antibiotic interventionwith auto-recommendations. For moreinformation, visit www.biomerieux.com.

Med-Time XLAutomatic PillDispenser

e-pill (Wellesley,Mass) recently introducedthe Med-TimeXL Automatic Pill Dispenser.The dispenseris designed for people who require multiplemedications to sustain their medicalcare at home, such as seniors living withchronic illnesses. Created to promoteoptimum medication results, the producthelps establish a daily routine fordelivering medications in the appropriatequantities, at the correct time eachday, for up to 28 days before refilling. TheMed-Time XL Automatic Pill Dispenserretails for $249.95. For more information,visit www.medtimexl.com, or call800-549-0095.

Sample Centers

MedVantx's (San Diego, Calif) SampleCenters, ATM-like drug-dispensingmachines, promote generics and certainOTC medications as suitable first-linetherapeutic agents. Therapy is initiatedwhen patients receive their initial courseof therapy, many times a 30-day supplyfor chronic medications, for free.Patients do not access the machine;rather, physicians dispense the medicationsfrom their offices at the point ofcare. More than 200 physicians' officesin 7 states now use Sample Centers atno cost to their practices or patients. Byautomating many of the manual procedures,including sample delivery andtracking, Sample Centers introduce controland functionality into the sample distributionprocess and promote low-costgenerics and OTCs as options beforeprogressing to more costly branded prescriptions.Sample Centers organize andprovide medication samples representing11 therapeutic categories and contain>20 medications in one or moredosage forms. For medication refills,physicians write prescriptions for theSample Center-dispensed medicationsthat can be filled at any retail pharmacy.Sample Centers also print dosage informationfor the inventory of medicationsstocked, including those that treathypertension, diabetes, depression, andhigh cholesterol. For more information,visit www.medvantx.com, or call 858-625-2990.