CONTRACT
LEADING IT SOLUTIONS PROVIDER, CEGEDIM RX, LOOKS AT HOW IT SYSTEM SUPPLIERS ARE HELPING PHARMACIES IMPLEMENT AUTOMATION INTO THEIR WORKFLOWS TO SUPPORT GROWING PRESCRIPTION NUMBERS.
IT AND AUTOMATION IN PHARMACY
SANDRA BALL, CEGEDIM RX
Community pharmacy was an early adopter of technology recognising the value in automating and streamlining the labelling and ordering in community pharmacy practice in the 1980s. Today automation has advanced further to support the rapid growth in prescription numbers with electronic solutions that further automate the dispensing process and streamline workfl ows to support increasing prescription volumes.
Our role as system supplier is to work with our customers to understand how these new solutions fi t within their businesses, how they could and should integrate with their core systems and what steps should be taken to ensure that any integration safeguards the critical sensitive data that may be shared.
There are many drivers for using automation in a community pharmacy setting. Increasing dispensing capacity, reducing costs, reduction in dispensing errors, improving access to medication and supporting patient adherence. These allow pharmacists and technicians to spend more time in patient-facing activities.
The fi rst main group is dispensing robots, which take medication
14 - SCOTTISH PHARMACIST
requests from the PMR and provide it to a workstation via chutes or conveyor belts. Dispensing robots can use either a picking head or channel model and have optional facilities to label medication before presenting it to the operator. Cegedim Rx has well proven interfaces to all of the main suppliers.
The next major group is robots that pack medication into MDS trays or medication pouches. This is a particularly laborious and error-prone process that is tedious for manual preparation. Typically, these robots are able to process up to 50 trays an hour.
Both of these robots require a considerable up front capital investment and have traditionally been the preserve of bigger, busier, pharmacies. Increasingly, group pharmacies are deploying them in a hub and spoke solution so that the cost can be amortised across multiple sites that would not individually merit a robot.
With the increasing use of peristaltic pump products for the dispensing of methadone liquid, there has been signifi cant interest in driving these units directly from the PMR (rather than double entering into a separate laptop). The arrival of eCDR functionality in PMR is making this
combined solution very attractive to pharmacies with high numbers of methadone patients and Cegedim Rx is at an advanced stage in delivering this solution.
Improving patient access to medication out of hours is the next class of automation to cover. These units allow patients to attend outside of pharmacy opening hours and pick up their prescriptions. Facilities exist to text a PIN to the patient and take any necessary payments. This ‘Amazon Locker’ type model is equally useful in the 24-hour culture of the big city and in low population density rural areas where delivery models are not viable.
Moving away from robots, Cegedim Rx has extensive and well-proven facilities to allow interfacing to eMAR solutions that then support the safer and more effi cient administration of medication in a care or nursing home environment.
Finally, we cannot ignore the infl uence of patient apps. There has been an explosion of choice in this area and they support (amongst many other things) repeat prescription management, service provision, Q&A sessions and medication reminders.
Cegedim Rx is currently working with an app supplier (Healthera) to provide this functionality to its customers.
One strand that will impact pharmacy in the near future and runs through all of these solutions is the Falsifi ed Medicines Directive (FMD) for which barcode scanning is proving a viable solution.
Barcode scanning is going to be affecting pharmacies across the UK regardless of the size of their business in the next few months as the Falsifi ed Medicines Directive fast approaches, and this particular example assures us of what is achievable in the required timescale to ensure pharmacies have a way of scanning items to decommission them at the point of handout. Whilst FMD is seen as a threat, we are working with our customers to turn this into an opportunity.
As the role of pharmacy changes, automation is going to be increasingly important, be it in the pharmacy, a hub, or in the hands of the patient. Cegedim Rx is committed to the seamless integration of PMR and automation for all our customers. •
AUTOMATION
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