ancy
Kickliter, Director of the
Auburn University Pharmacy says, “Our pharmacy is
very fortunate to have state-of-the-art robotic equipment such as the ScriptPro.”
Medication dispensing robots are still rare; don't expect to find them at every
corner pharmacy. The AU Pharmacy acquired this technology because it is operated
by The Harrison School of Pharmacy (HSOP), whose faculty helped develop this
cutting edge science.
Dr. Kenneth Barker, Director of
The HSOP Center for Pharmacy Operations and Designs (CPOD) and a leading expert
in medication errors, and Associate Dr. Elizabeth Flynn have been involved in
the development and evaluation of pharmacy automation for the two market leaders
(Pyxis, ScriptPro).
Why is this research so important? Simply put, reducing
medication errors can save lives. An Auburn study led by Dr. Flynn concluded
that "dispensing errors are a problem on a national level" in the retail
community pharmacy, and established a retail dispensing error rate of nearly one
in every 50 prescriptions filled.
And a disturbing
1999 Institute of Medicine study found that 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur
annually as a result of medical errors, a large portion of which are related to
prescription drugs. But, like Spiderman to the rescue, robotic medication
dispensing technology appears to be a viable solution to dramatically improving
medication errors. A recent study presented at a
national pharmacists’ conference concluded that “the convergence of automated
dispensing technologies with sophisticated patient data-management systems has
radically transformed the drug dispensing process, achieving greater patient
safety and lower cost.”
How
does a robotic machine help reduce medication errors and increase patient
safety? The ScriptPro machine takes over the time consuming manual labor of
counting tablets and capsules, but with a dramatic increase in accuracy,
allowing the pharmacists to attend to more clinical
tasks, like patient counseling. The machine’s checks and balances automatically
assure the patient is receiving the correct prescription.
ScriptPro President and CEO Michael E. Coughlin
makes the process sound simple: "Basically the machine counts tablets or
capsules into a vial, prints and applies a label to the vial, and sends it out
to the pharmacist on a conveyer belt."
Mrs.
Kickliter explains further, “While ScriptPro is processing
the medication and sending it out on the conveyor belt, the pharmacist can move
on to discuss with the patient the appropriate use and expectations from the
medication, take doctors’ calls, process paper work, etc. Then the pharmacist
comes back to do a final check before the medication is ready to go to the
patient.
All the pharmacist has to do is hold the vial in front of a bar-code scanner to
verify it.”
While that may sounds elementary, ScriptPro is highly complex technology. “It
is rather mind blowing,” says Kickliter. “With the size of each pill logged into
its memory, the robot is even able to take the amount of medication ordered and
decide how large a vial is needed.”
The pills are held
in a wall of containers. Using bar code technology,
ScriptPro finds the right drug,
fills the
prescription according to computer input by a pharmacist,
and matches the patient name to the correct medication. Furthermore,
the system's
software can trace the stock bottle, lot number and expiration date of the
prescriptions filled. It also is possible to track who loaded the pills into the
machine, filled the prescription and verified the vial.
Auburn University Pharmacy may be
small in size, but it has a technological giant at work within its walls.
Director Kickliter says, “We are delighted with the increased safety and
customer service that ScriptPro provides for us and our patients.”