Pharmacy robots cut drug-dispensing errors

ROBOTS are replacing humans in the Irish pharmacy sector and ensuring drug-dispensing errors are virtually eliminated, a conference on patient safety heard yesterday.

A community pharmacist in Mallow, Co Cork, claimed the automated storage and retrieval system for medication he installed almost a year ago had virtually eliminated “drug picking” errors.

As soon as the pharmacist enters the required drug into the pharmacy’s computer, a robot automatically selects the medication, labels it and delivers it to the point of sale.

Prof Peter Weedle, an adjunct professor of clinical pharmacy practice at University College Cork, who runs two pharmacies in Mallow, said he knew of just two errors that occurred in the dispensing of more than 100,000 prescriptions since the system was installed in June 2007.

One error was a printing mistake made by the manufacturer of a blood pressure tablet that was not spotted by any other pharmacy and resulted in a batch of the same produce being recalled.

“Under the old system the pharmacist would be picking up errors on a daily basis in the final check,” said Prof Weedle.

It was not unusual under the old system for a mistake to be spotted in every 100 to 200 prescriptions, he told the GS1Ireland healthcare conference in Portmarnock, Co Dublin.

“Occasionally, some of these mistakes go past the pharmacist and patients get the wrong medicines,” he said.

Prof Weedle said the system not only reduced “picking errors” but freed up pharmacists to spend more time with patients.

He believes automated dispensing systems will also make drugs cheaper: “It increases efficiency dramatically and means we are more capable of dispensing more prescriptions because we are not having to walk back and forward to pick medicines off the shelf. The robot also knows the exact time a product was added, so we do not stock anything for more than three months and anything kept beyond that period is sent back to the supplier for credit.”