If a new experiment using robots is successful in England at Leicester hospitals, pharmacy technician jobs could soon be a thing of the past.
An Italian company, Ingegneria Biomedica Santa Lucia, is running a nine-month trial with new robot technology that will sort and dispense drugs for patients.
Leicester Mercury explained how it will work:
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The robot repackages medications into individual doses with a unique barcode and stores it in a locked cabinet. A trolley then locks into the cabinet and transfers the medication needed on the wards. When a nurse scans the patient’s barcode wristband the relevant drawer on the trolley automatically unlocks.
This new system could have a lot of significant benefits, according to Graeme Hall, deputy chief pharmacist at Leicester’s hospitals.
“Almost every hospital patient will receive medication of some sort, and on a typical day in Leicester, that can mean 20,000 individual medicine prescriptions, dispensing and administration so it is imperative that we do that as safely and as efficiently as possible,” Hall said. “This project will bring huge benefits to our patients and staff, with fewer errors as we can ensure the right medication and dose gets to the right patient on time. We will also save money by not wasting unused drugs.”
If all goes as planned, the use of these robots could expand and might be a really smart way to manage drugs in hospitals elsewhere.
