What do you call a robotic one-armed device that spends its day plotting its every move, choosing among 180 small plastic drawers in eight stacks filled with pills and tablets?
Hal, the name of the out-of-control computer in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey" is definitely off-limits. So staff at The Everett Clinic’s main campus pharmacy are considering Phil or Robby.
Since being installed last month, the machine pharmacy workers are now on a first-name basis with has dispensed an average of 10,000 pills a day, or about half of all the prescriptions filled at the Hoyt Avenue pharmacy.
It’s thought to be the first robotic machine at a pharmacy in Snohomish County, although other pharmacies are using automated machines to count and dispense pills.
No pharmacy jobs were lost at The Everett Clinic when the new system was installed.
The $200,000 pill-dispensing system includes a robotic "arm" to find the prescribed tablet and open a small door on the plastic container in which it’s stored. A laser counts the pills as they tumble into a plastic vial held by the mechanical arm.
Patients get their prescriptions quicker, in about 15 minutes, said Teri Ferreira, director of retail operations. "We’d like to get that down to 10."
The machine frees pharmacists from the abacuslike monotony of counting out tablets.
"We went to pharmacy school not just to count and pour," said John Sontra, pharmacy manger.
On Mondays and Fridays, the pharmacy’s busiest days, staff field more than 400 phone calls from patients. "It’s cacophonous," Sontra said, answering questions and checking for problems that a new medication could cause if taken in combination with other prescriptions.
Pharmacists have more time to spend with patients, he said. "It’s changed how we do business."
Grocery-store-style bar codes assigned to each pill are entered into the computer that directs the robotic arm. They must match with bar codes on each tablet storage drawer — one of four built-in checks to ensure that the right medicine is dispensed.
A digital picture of the prescribed medicine also is displayed on a computer screen. Pharmacy staff match the pills in an open vial with the image as they pluck it from the end of a short conveyor belt.
Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center and the University of Washington Medical Center have used the robotic prescription-filling devices for about three years, processing about 1,500 prescriptions a day.
"Their error rate is much, much smaller than you might get from a human," said Shabir Somani, director of pharmacy services for University of Washington Medicine.
No one knows precisely how many errors occur in prescription writing and filling.
Nationally, one out of every 20 to 30 prescriptions dispensed in community pharmacies are estimated to have errors. They’re caused anywhere in the chain of events beginning with the physician writing a prescription to the point a prescription is filled, said Chris Walsh, a fellow at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices in Huntingdon Valley, Pa.
While technology such as robotic arms and electronic prescription writing cuts down on prescription errors, "there’s no one piece of technology that’s a panacea," he said.
"Assuming it’s correct just because there’s technology involved in the process has been identified as a cause of errors as well."
Providence Everett Medical Center uses automated medication-dispensing systems for hospital patients at its Colby and Pacific campuses, but it doesn’t use robotics.
The system first was installed at its pavilion for women and children, which opened in May 2002, and now is used throughout the hospital, said spokeswoman Teresa Wenta.
However it’s not used at the hospital’s outpatient pharmacies, she said.
Bartell Drugs at Lake Stevens has been using a machine for at least four years that automatically counts pills for 83 of the most-prescribed medications, said Scott Roundy, pharmacy manager.
"When we first put it in, we weren’t sure how much it would do for us," he said. "When it went down for a little while, we realized how much more work it was without it."
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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