Slashdot Mirror
Robot Pharmacists
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."
I've wondered about this as well. An English coworker told me that in the UK, every medication he'd seen was sold this way. Given that most all medication is prescribed in one month intervals at one of just a few dosages, it seems to make perfect sense.
Being able to break apart the blister packs they're usually on also makes it much more convenient to pocket doses when going out and what not.
Being able to break apart the blister packs they're usually on also makes it much more convenient to pocket doses when going out and what not.
Actually you would be in violation of federal law if you were to carry around medication like that, because it is not in its labelled container. Many people that carry their daily dose of pills around in pill organizers aren't even aware of that. Usually its no big deal, but it can get you busted big time.
Prescription: Give him 20 of [whatever]
Pharmacist: OK, here's 20 of [whatever]
Do they spend two years in college learning to count to 20?
I work for a large (Fortune 500) prescription benefit management company. We use automation in all of our mail order facilities, pumping out 60000 prescriptions A DAY. We have had this technology in place for many years and is the only way mail order pharmacies are cheap and effective. The processing has several quality controls, but at the end of the line you still have a human pharmacist checking the drug. This is required by state laws...And yes, even with automation and 7 checks by machinery including an automated image comparison the pharmacist STILL catches errors.
This seems like a great idea, until I read the line - "Doctors type prescriptions into a pharmacy computer system and the orders send the robot into action." This implies a physician (or health care provider if you prefer a more derogatory term the insurance world uses) will actually use technology.... Not just a computer, but a handheld, tablet PC, something with a browser... the chances are slim to none with most of the baby boomers out there.
My first real world experience with CORBA was connecting a Cobol program on a mainframe to a Java application. The Java app would then shoot drug interaction and formulary data to be used by the Physician's winCE handheld. As a former biochemist that spent a serious amount of time working with MD/PhD's in a hospital, the app seemed like a killer idea - response time was fast, the data was secure, and the information was personalized. Then they tried to get them to use the thing. I understand 'you can lead a horse to water' on a whole new level.
Anyhow, there is the human factor as well. It is hard to beat a well designed smart system, but I like the idea of requiring two humans - one to order the drug, another to confirm. The physician spends a surprisingly little amount of time in the real sciences compared to a pharmacist. Different skill set (filtered on what I consider real science). As a side note, pharmacists were pretty good with technology - since they were using Power Builder thick clients and later web interfaces to deal with co-pays, adjudication, interaction warnings, etc.
Counting pills is not hard. Knowing that pill x with pill y scores you a role on the potion miscibility chart is priceless. A real easy fix to "has to read doctor's handwriting" problem? Get them to type the bloody prescription. Wait that would require them to use some funky software ranging from a typewriter to a computer thing...
nah... too hard.
Had this been a toolkit for a pharmacist, it would really take off.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
- "...refills grandpa's heart medication with viagra..."
Funny you should choose that phrase...Sildenafil citrate (Viagra) was orininally researched as a heart medication. Pfizer only found out about the, uh, uplifting side effects when their male test patients were extremely reluctant to return test formulations of the drug.
I think this one truly fits the definition of a "happy accident!"
"...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
A pharmacist once made up a label for amoxicillin for my son (an infant then) with three times the regular dose - essentially listing the total daily input as a single dose. I only noticed it when I saw the medicine level in the bottle dropping faster than it should have for a 10 day course. Fortunately, amoxicillin is not toxic in high doses, but other drugs could have killed him.
Let's face it - neither humans not machines are perfect, but machines are less prone to error for routine tasks like prescribing medication.
I have a good friend who owns a large independent pharmacy in New England (I won't be more specific, because I'm not sure if he'd want it mentioned here - though his store and system have been profiled in both trade and general newspapers). He loves it - it handles his top 200 medications, and in his own paraphrased words:
"It lets the pharmacists (of which he is one) spend more time with the patients, and less time counting pills."
He is able to keep a couple fewer pharmacy techs on hand then he used to need for his volume, but it gives the pharmacists a nice assist. He worries less about mistakes - the sanity checks these machines have are a lot more reliable than a human's would be. He's told me he sleeps better at night, knowing the likelihood of a potentially fatal mistake is far lower because of the robot. He sees the role of a pharmacist as being to advise and dispense - with a strong emphasis on the first job.
Here's a true anecdotal story supporting robot usage: I take a Priloec every day. One time I went to my local CVS to get a refill - when I got home and opened the bottle I found Prozac instead (the prescription label was correct - they just filled it with the wrong drug). They took care of the problem immediately, but imagine if I wasn't bright enough to realize that those pills weren't mine (I joke that I'd still have had stomach trouble, but I'd have been happy about it). Fortunately, taking a Prozac per day wouldn't have killed me, but what if it had been something that could have?
That's where I can see robots helping the typical pharmacist. It'll prevent those sort of mistakes from happening, and ensure that the drug ordered is the drug given.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Hopefuly, the software isn't windows based, what a disaster that would be..
Yeah, I agree with you. I hang out with an older guy on IRC that owned several pharmacies in his town in PA. He got robots in several years ago. All it does is count pills from hoppers, there is still a lot of human checks involved. All it lets him do is now have so many workers counting pills by hand all day.
Something other people have pointed out, pharmacists are usually pretty tech-savvy. This guy had unix machines in his pharmacies to communicate with the different branches across town 20 years ago.
He's sold out to CVS within the last year and retired now... oh well, score one for big corporations.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Yeah...I know it's not a nice thing to say. But fsck that, and fsck the karma too.