A robot will soon be dispensing medicines across pharmacies in Dubai, giving more time to the pharmacist to offer counselling services to patients at the counter.
With the introduction of the system, the patient waiting time will be cut by 90 per cent and also reduce human error.
The robot is part of the Dubai Health Authority's (DHA) plan to implement the smart pharmacy system across its health facilities.
Announcing details at the Gitex DHA stand on Monday, Director-General Essa Al Maidoor, without giving a timeline for the implementation of the system, said the authority's all health facilities will soon be fitted with the system.
The robot arranges medicines and dispenses them. Pharmacists simply need to store medicines in the robot's vault before the machine sorts out the medicines according to the near date of expiry and arranges them in specific shelves based on the barcode of the medicines.
The machine then dispenses the medicines and the pharmacist simply needs to give them to the patient. The system can handle between 15,000 to 100,000 medicines depending on the size of the system.
Regularly used medicines are put into the high-speed channel and in this channel, up to 100 medicines can be dispensed within 30 seconds. Medicines that are not commonly used are stored in shelves and up to 15 products can be dispensed in less than 10 seconds.
"The machine sorts out the medicines and dispenses the near expiry medications first so that there is no wastage of medications,” said Dr Manal Taryam, CEO of Primary Health Care.
"If there is any expired product in the system, it flags it and it is discarded by the system.”
She also said that sorting for medicines is extremely time efficient due to the system. "The pharmacist simply needs to take the medicines received from the suppliers and put it into the system. The system sorts out the products and arranges them in the right place according to barcodes. Four hundred medicines can be sorted out in less than 30 minutes,” she added.
Dr Nadia Al Marzouqi, acting head of pharmacy, region 2, in the PHC sector, added that after a doctor writes the e-prescription, it is transferred to the pharmacy's system. "By the time the patient reaches the pharmacy, the prescription is verified by the pharmacist and the medicine is dispensed.”
Source: Khaleej Times