The pharmacy at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, England, has installed a robot to fill patients' prescriptions for them. According to hospital officials, the robot -- which not only fills prescriptions but keeps records as well -- will save the hospital money and its employees time.
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conventional view |
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bottom lineWhat you need to know - Conventional View
• The Musgrove Park Hospital Pharmacy dispenses 160,000 items and 260,000 related supplies every year. Filling these orders is a substantial burden on pharmacists' time.
• The new robot
pharmacist uses barcodes to identify and sort
medication. This makes it possible for human
pharmacists to spend more time with
patients or refiling unused medications.
• The
robot can also keep records of every item in stock, and is able to check and sort all incoming orders to keep the records up-to-date.
• Two people will double check each prescription before handing it over to a patient. The robot has an error rate of one in 10,000.
• The
hospital says that the robot will save it more than 1,200 hours of staff time per year, and that it has already saved the hospital £30,000 ($58,000). This implies that human pharmacists are working fewer hours, rather than devoting all their newly free time to patients.
• Quote: "The new robot has revolutionised the way we work and cut the time it takes to store, find and dispense
drugs." - Principal Pharmacist Mark Ashley
What you need to know - Alternative View
Statements and opinions by Mike Adams, author for Truth Publishing• Drug
companies love the idea of using robotic automation to dispense more drugs to more patients. In fact, they would love to eliminate humans altogether in the disease diagnosis and
drug dispensing process, taking a "vending machine" approach to selling
prescription drugs that eliminates
doctors, too. The strong push to get prescription drugs approved as over-the-counter drugs is evidence of drug companies' efforts to bypass doctors.
• While robotic pharmacists may reduce drug
deaths from prescription filling errors, they will do nothing to prevent deaths from properly dispensed drugs.
Bottom line
• A UK hospital is using a robot to fill patients' prescriptions.
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