Feb 3 2011
Great Western Hospital has received the IT Innovation Award for including the Wall-E and Eve robots in its pharmacy. The Health Business Awards identifies projects from NHS’ business segments and has honored GWH for its pharmacy robots.
The pharmacy robots feature arms and infra-red scanning devices. They have been deployed since July 2010. These robots represent the conclusion of the hospital’s project worth £350,000 for improving their pharmacy services. The program is focused on bringing down the wait time for patients to get their medications.
Sarah Davis, Manager of Pharmacy Operations and Project Head, has stated that the pharmacy robots are highly useful and they have played a major role in reducing dispatch times. She added that the actual idea behind including these robots was to hasten the medication delivery process and to enable pharmacists to spend more time in visiting wards and providing direct care to patients. She mentioned that these robots have met all their requirements and they have also enabled them to minimize prescription errors, assuring a better and safer process.
The advanced scanning devices of the robot are connected to the IT software of the pharmacy for entering and saving the names of pharmacy medications. Whenever the robot receives instruction from the pharmacy staff through the IT system, it examines the code and instantly identifies the drug on the respective shelf where it has been stored.
Source: http://www.swindon-marlborough.nhs.uk