TECHNOLOGY
RESEARCH
Each pharmacy now only needs to make up about 25 a week in store, which is obviously a lot less labour intensive.’
Meanwhile, in the Scottish capital, contractor Dara O’Malley from Omnicare, acknowledges that his pharmacies had reached crisis points with dosette boxes across all of the shops.
‘We currently deal with dosette boxes for over 1000 patients across the eight shops each week,’ Dara told SP, ‘which is a huge workload. We knew that we had to look at something that was not only labour saving, but which would also improve accuracy and capacity. Also, we knew that we had to give the pharmacists the time and space to develop other services.
‘We looked what was going on across the shops. The managers were telling us that they were struggling with levels of trays – particularly if a member of staff was off sick, and it was increasingly difficult to keep a continuity of service.
‘I began looking for a solution about four or five years ago. I travelled about extensively looking at various systems in places as far flung as Holland. When I heard about Synmed, I went to Paris to see in operation and, although I knew there was a massive investment, it had to be done to ensure due diligence.
‘The key thing about Synmed – its USP if you like – was the fact that you don’t have to calibrate canisters. The volatility of the generic market at the moment made this a win-win and effectively ruled out all of the other competition. I knew that I didn’t want a closed tray and, in fact, when I put
Omnicare owner, Dara O’Malley, and system operator, Rachel.
it in front of the managers and asked how they felt about it – they said that if an ACT was checking, they would want it done on an open tray.
‘The capacity of the Synmed model was also superior to anything else that we looked at; the fact that it held took more products was a sure-fire winner for us.
‘We’ve now had the system in for about a year and a half and I would say that it has saved at least six members of staff across all of the shops.
‘All of the dosette boxes for all of the shops (we now have nine) are serviced by the robot and we operate with a hub and spoke system. Our MDS business is a massive operation and will, I would anticipate, simply continue to grow, but even though we are consistently having to supply more to our patients, our system has never operated more smoothly than it is doing now. We’ve gone from our pharmacists drowning in their workload to a system that is smooth and highly effective. We’ve also effectively eliminated the risks that were involved in doing these boxes manually, so that’s another major benefit for our patients – and ourselves!’ •
The team at Dickson Chemist (l-r): Owner, Stephen Dickson; operators Njoubla and Maureen, and Operations Manager, Nadine Miller.
SCOTTISH PHARMACIST - 39
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