Investigating the impact of a clinical pharmacist on the health outcomes of a paediatric pharmacists

Background: Recent fiscal scrutiny and changes in health care financing have necessitated that health care providers justify a clinical and economical basis for their involvement in patient care. Although clinical pharmacists have been shown to enhance patient health outcomes and reduce costs among adult patients, the impact of a pharmacist in paediatric patient care has not been extensively documented. Method: A team of pharmacists was established to conduct a systematic review of the literature. A title scan of papers in 5 databases was performed by 14 pharmacists using the MeSH terms Pharmacists, Medical Intervention, Paediatrics and Cost-Benefit Analysis. The underpinning research question was: "How do the professional activities of a clinical pharmacist impact the health outcomes of paediatric in-patients?" The abstracts of suitable titles were scanned and articles were read to assess relevance. Relevant articles were then evaluated independently by at least two members of the team, using critical appraisal tools suitable for quantitative, qualitative or systematic review studies. Results: The initial search identified 327 citations which after full text review and application of the scoring tool, resulted in 12 studies included in the systematic review. The average number of interventions reported varied from study to study. Dosing recommendations, pharmacokinetics and drug allergy alerts were the most commonly recorded interventions by pharmacists for a paediatric population. Evidence from this review will be used to formulate improvements to in-patient paediatric care. Conclusion: Clinical pharmacists have a positive impact on inpatient paediatric care

The Internet of Things Meets Business Process Management A Manifesto

status: publishe

The Internet of Things Meets Business Process Management: A Manifesto

The Internet of Things (IoT) refers to a network of connected devices that collects and exchanges data through the Internet. These things can be artificial or natural and interact as autonomous agents that form a complex system. In turn, business process management (BPM) was established to analyze, discover, design, implement, execute, monitor, and evolve collaborative business processes within and across organizations. While the IoT and BPM have been regarded as separate topics in research and in practice, we strongly believe that, on the one hand, the management of IoT applications will greatly benefit from BPM concepts, methods, and technologies. On the other hand, the IoT poses challenges that will require enhancements and extensions of the current state of the art in the BPM field. In this article, we question the extent to which these two paradigms can be combined, and we discuss emerging challenges and intersections from a research and practitioner's point of view in terms of complex software systems development