Top 10 Innovations: #6 | April 18th, 2009 | Author: admin

Note: This is the fourth post for my Top 10 List of the medical equipment innovations with the greatest impact on facility design. My criteria was simple: Did the innovation create a significant change in the cost (Increase or Decrease) to design and construct the facility? The greater the overall impact, the higher the item appears on the list . I’ve limited my review to the 20 year period from 1990 – 2009. Please let me know your thoughts. What equipment innovations would you have added to the list?

#6 Pharmacy Robotics

How is the pharmacy like the postal service? The scripts, they just keep coming and coming and coming!

Automated machinery is starting to take the repetitive tasks of fulfilling orders in less time and far more accurately than any human could ever achieve. From counting tablets to placing labels on prescription bottles, the most redundant tasks are being migrated from the human workers to automated robots. The goal is better accuracy and lower cost.

A robotics implementation means 24 x 7 productivity and 100% accuracy. The systems are manually stocked by pharmacy staff, which represent the only opportunity for mistakes.

Implementations include both outpatient and inpatient solutions. Outpatient solutions provide both rapid fulfillment and self-service options. An inpatient solution offers unit dose and rapid fulfillment. The implimentaiton of a robotic pharmacy system provides the opportunity to bring greater accuracy to a patient population and free up pharmacists and techs to provide more focused customer service than ever before.

Tags: Pharmacy, Robotics

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