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Robot Pharmacists

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the still-have-to-wait-an-hour dept.

Makarand writes "The next time you visit a pharmacy your prescription may be filled by a robot according to a TechTV article. Hospitals and drugstores are now increasingly relying on automated technology to count, bottle, and label prescription drugs in a faster and more accurate way. The technology uses a bar-code system similar to those used to read prices in grocery stores. Doctors enter prescription details directly into the pharmacy computer. The robot springs into action when an order is recieved. Riding on a conveyor belt, the robot picks up an empty vial, identifies the bar code of the chosen drug, and automatically fills the drug bottle."

3 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Slick Technology by edlong · · Score: 5, Informative

    This company, http://www.innovat.com (skip flash intro), innovation associates, has some cool technology that does this. For example, if the doctor mistakenly chooses pill A, instead of pill B, the machine will not dispense. Also, you can't fill the Tylenol Aspirin tray with anything but that. It uses some fancy recognition software; it can tell the difference between a skittle and and M&M, plus it won't dispense if pills are deformed (chiped etc.) cool stuff.

  2. robots by east+coast · · Score: 4, Informative

    They missed the boat on this one. I work for a mail order pharmacedical company that has been using robotics to do the same thing for many years (atleast the 7 that i've been there).
    The most common misconception is that it replaces a pharamcist but by law (atleast here in the Pittsburgh PA area) the pharmacist still looks over the pills in the vial. But a pharmacists time is at a premium and machines are much more capable of doing the job of counting with less errors and faster than a human phar tech.
    Overall our "defect" rate is on par with your mom and pop store but our RXs per hour count is much higher.

    --
    Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
  3. The point of this shouldn't be to. . . by kfg · · Score: 5, Informative

    replace the pharmacist, for all the reasons you've stated and more. The point is to automate one of the routine jobs of the pharmacist where mechanical means is less prone to error and removes an act of pure labor from the job.

    The pharmacist should, as a matter of course, double check on the work of the robot, because even robots can make mistakes.

    This isn't like replacing the pharmacist. It's like giving a ditch digger a backhoe to replace his shovel, or automating a daily incremental system backup so the admin can spend his time and attention somewhere more profitable.

    KFG