Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) Go Live began at 5 a.m. this morning at Sherman Hospital! CPOE is a process of electronic entry of physician instructions for the treatment of hospitalized patients. These orders, such as lab tests needed or prescriptions that need to be filled, are communicated over a computer network to other members of the medical staff and/or to the departments responsible for fulfilling the order.

First and foremost, CPOE is all about patient safety. This new process reduces errors related to handwriting and provides error-checking for duplicate or incorrect doses or tests. CPOE is also beneficial as it allows order entry at point-of-care and decreases delay in order completion.

Sherman has prepared for the transition to CPOE over the past year, including specialized training sessions for physicians and staff. During the next four weeks, Sherman “CPOE experts” will be supporting our medical staff and staff through individualized coaching. These experts are easily identifiable with bright orange t-shirts!

Whether you’ve recently downloaded it and haven’t gotten a chance to mess around with it, or you’re curious as to how it works, the video below will walk you through what you’ll be doing upon loading the app.

Pictured above: Google’s home page today, in celebration of Earth Day 2011.

Today is Earth Day, a day that inspires awareness and appreciation for our planet’s incredible natural environment. And what better way to celebrate than to throw a few fun facts your way about 1) geothermal energy, an emerging renewable resource, and 2) Sherman’s geothermal lake, the hospital’s reliable and sustainable energy source? Let’s dive right in!

About Geothermal Energy

• Geothermal energy is energy stored in the Earth. Earth’s geothermal energy originates from the original formation of the planet, from radioactive decay of minerals, from volcanic activity, and from solar energy absorbed at the surface (Wiki).
• Thanks to recent technological developments, geothermal energy is now a possibility outside of areas near tectonic plate boundaries. These technological advances have made Sherman’s geothermal lake possible.
• If widely deployed in place of fossil fuels, geothermal power has the potential to help mitigate global warming and ease the strain on our nonrenewable resources.
• What other renewable resources would you like to see more of in the near future?

About Sherman’s Geothermal Lake

• Pipes at the bottom of the lake pull in water and convert it to energy. The water at the bottom of the lake is 4 degrees Celsius year-round, regardless of the weather outside. 4 degrees Celsius is between 39 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Chilly!
• The geothermal lake is incredibly energy efficient. As an example, the most efficient gas furnace (which most of us have in our homes) has a 94% efficiency rating. Sherman’s geothermal system has a 400% efficiency rating! This means 4 units of energy are produced for every 1 unit of electricity.
• There are 185 miles of piping needed to make the geothermal lake functional, equal to more than 3,000 football fields. Put another way, the Willis Tower is 45 miles from Sherman Hospital. You could walk there and back two times before you reached the end of Sherman’s geothermal pipes!
• Our lake is the largest geothermal lake in Illinois, and one of the largest in the world.

To learn more about what you can do this Earth Day, visit earthday.org

The benefits of easy-to-access healthcare apps go beyond convenience, though. Consider the Haiti earthquake victim who credits his First Aid iPhone App with helping him survive 65 hours beneath hotel rubble, as he used it to figure out how to bandage his wounds. He also set his phone alarm every 20 minutes to keep himself from sleeping, as he read that he shouldn’t sleep in a state of shock.

So below, we’re sharing a few of our favorite free healthcare iPhone apps. Consider downloading a few now to your Smartphone, so you can live healthier and possibly even save a life.

App: WebMD Mobile

Use for: Basic symptom check and treatment research. Also, use the first aid guide for emergency situations, including illustrations of CPR and what to do if someone’s choking. Also includes the basic first aid like insect bites and injuries. It’s always best to let the professionals do the diagnosing, but this basic information is handy to have as a first and immediate reference.

App: iTriage

Use for: Basic symptom, disease, and medical procedure research. Find your nearest medical facility in an emergency with turn by turn directions. Find a doctor (although the Sherman mobile site also allows you to find a doctor, so if you are looking for an Elgin specialist search Sherman as well).

App: Calorie Counter and Diet Tracker by MyFitnessPal

Use for: Enter food consumed and exercise performed during the day. Tracks calories consumed and all major nutrients. Will keep track of fat, protein, carbs, sugar, fiber, cholesterol and more. Saves frequently used foods and exercises. Allows you to enter a daily diary of weight and keeps progress reports.

App: Body Fitness Free

Use for: Learn from pictures and detailed instructions over 320 exercises, organized by Core, Lower Body, Arms, Chest, Shoulders, Back, and Yoga. Bring with you to the gym, or just choose exercises you can do from home. Keep an exercise journal. Create customized workouts. Use the calendar to keep track of your progress.

App: Footsteps Pedometer

Use for: Keep track of step count, time walked, distance traveled, calories burned, and speed. It will track all your activity in a day, as well as manually track sessions when you start and stop it. Alerts you when you have traveled a specified distance. Allows you to configure your own step length for accuracy. It will even email you your sessions. You can browse your history later.

Any other good free healthcare apps out there? If you have any favorites, please pass them along to us!

To keep up with what’s going on in our other blogs and social media, visit shermanhealth.com

-Find a Sherman location
-View the floorplans and find patient rooms
-Find a Physician
-Send an eCard
-Connect with Sherman via social media
-Find things to do in the area

With the growing popularity of smartphone technology, we decided to examine how users were using ShermanHealth.com. Analytics showed that when we compare the last six months (October through March) to the same months the year prior, iPhone browser visits (the most popular Smartphone browser to access our site) jumped over 700% from one year to the next.

In November, Google started a separate segment that shows mobile devices to visit a site (which gives you an idea of how important mobile devices are becoming). And even when we compare November, the first available month of data for all Smartphone devices, to last month, mobile device users jumped 116%.

We know how important your time is, especially when you are researching on-the-go. And so we created a mobile site to make searching for the information you need simple, fast, and easy on the eyes.

ShermanHealth.com is now ready for your smartphone. We won’t say it’s the next big thing. It’s more like the next small thing. And it’s one more way we’re working to become the best community hospital in the nation.

To view the mobile site, visit ShermanHealth.com from your mobile device.