An Overview of the Current State and Perspectives of Pharmacy Robot and Medication Dispensing Technology

Abstract

It has been widely reported that a large number of patients die from cases of errors in the issuing of medication prescriptions. These cases occur due to a wide range of things, but the common denominator in all of the cases is humans. A hospital pharmacy has a very critical task, especially with growing patient numbers. The increasing number of prescriptions needed to be filled daily reduces the amount of time that the staff can use to focus on each individual prescription, which may increase the human error ratio. The need for robotic-assisted pharmacies is arising from here to distribute drugs to eradicate or substantially reduce human error. The pharmacy robot is one of the most significant technologies that play a prominent role in the advancement of hospital pharmacy systems. The purpose of this review paper is to cover the pharmacy robot concept and the published literature reporting on pharmacy robot technology as one of the most important applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in pharmacology. Although the outcomes of the impact of the pharmacy robot have been increasingly beneficial in overall improvement, staff morale, and functionality of pharmacies, there are still mechanical errors occurring. The errors, in turn, require human intervention. The key takeaway from this study is that robots or machines cannot replace human duties in their entirety. This in turn means that those human interventions will have an impact on the workflow and throughput.

Management of drug supply chain information based on “artificial intelligence + vendor managed inventory” in China: perspective based on a case study

“…Our Internet cloud pharmacy has saved a total cost of over 70 million yuan for patients, ranking first in online treatment for ophthalmology and otolaryngology nationwide. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Big Data Analytics (BDA) can guarantee accuracy within the range of task parameters ( Alahmari et al, 2022 ) and have the potential to significantly improve resilience of supply chains ( Zamani et al, 2022 ). The cloud pharmacy greatly facilitated patients’ online follow-up visits and medication dispensing while reducing the risks associated with personnel gathering and cross-infection.…”

Medicinal Time Reminder and Touchless Dispenser Robot in Hospitals for Elderly Patients and Patients Having Contagious Disease

“…This might encourage more regular monitoring, which could help avoid drug tapering and medicine addiction. [18]. This work discussed about the technologies for pharmacy automation helping pharmacists steer clear of errors and contamination.…”

Future of Pharmaceutical Industry: Role of Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Robotics

“…Today, the technology is mature enough for mass adoption of drug manufacturing, and the degree of automation is expected to increase at record rates in the coming years. 9 A thorough literature survey was carried out for this study using AI, automation, robotics, and pharmaceuticals as keywords in scientific databases such as Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The present review article covers the future roles of AI, automation, and robotics in the pharmaceutical industry.…”

“…Today, the technology is mature enough for mass adoption of drug manufacturing, and the degree of automation is expected to increase at record rates in the coming years. 9…”