Getting a prescription filled at the pharmacy is something most people take for granted. You hand in the slip of paper from your doctor and while the pharmacist counts out the pills you can shop for 10 minutes. The next thing you hear is “prescription ready for Smith.”
But what happens while you are moseying up and down the aisles in Stanwood’s Haggen Pharmacy might be surprising to some. Although pharmacists there still count out many prescription needs, there is a robot divvying up the most asked for 88 medicines.
The Scriptpro Pharmacy Automation machine, otherwise known as Rosie the Robot to Stanwood pharmacy staff, is a compact device that is efficient and precise.
“It probably helps about 40 percent of the dispensing portion (of our work),” said Connie Tamura, a pharmacist at Haggen in Stanwood. “We remodeled just to fit this thing in.”
The robot has been in place in Stanwood since March and is the first in a Haggen pharmacy in Snohomish County. When pharmacy staff take a prescription from a customer they put the information into a computer, which then sends a message to Rosie the Robot to begin filling the prescription.
Behind dark glass doors a robotic “arm” takes one of two sizes of containers and moves it to a container filled with one of the 88 most ordered medications. A red laser beam scans a barcode on the box making sure that the medication inside is the one that has been prescribed. The pills are automatically counted, then dispensed from the drawer via a sloping lip that funnels them into a bottle.
Next, the container is robotically labeled before it is sent out on a small conveyor belt to the pharmacy staff.
Once it arrives, a staff member scans the barcode on the label which verifies on a computer screen that the medication inside the bottle matches that of the prescription. Pharmacists also look at the medication and compare it with a picture on a screen.
“We get used to the common ones,” said Mary Kuhlman, a pharmacist at Haggen. ”We know what they look like.”
Even so, Kuhlman and the other pharmacists check again and look at lot numbers and expiration dates before handing out prescriptions.
If a barcode was scanned and did not match the medication, a warning sign would tell the pharmacist, who would then be able to see that the photograph on the computer screen and the pills were not the same. They would then inspect and fill the prescription exactly to order.
There are approximately 2,000 to 3,000 drugs in the pharmacy. Rosie the Robot deals only with the most ordered medications, including the antibiotic, Amoxicillin; the cholesterol lowering drug, Lipitor; and a thyroid medication, Levothyroxine.
On Mondays, the pharmacy’s busiest day, the machine fills close to 500 prescriptions. Around 2,300 are filled each week by Rosie, primarily for people in the Stanwood and Camano Island areas.
Tamura says that the robot allows pharmacists more time to spend with customers, talking to them about their prescriptions and how to take them.
Kuhlman agrees that having the robot gives her time to do other things. She can now walk outside the pharmacy more often and help customers with questions in the aisles of her department.
Having the robot has not meant cutting down on staff. Instead there has been an increase, since maintenance technicians are needed to help with any mechanical problems that might arise. Employees in the pharmacy also need to replenish the boxes of pills inside the Scriptpro machine.
Both Tamura and Kuhlman have no problem trusting the accuracy of the robot. They both say that they would have their own prescriptions filled by the machine. Kuhlman’s parents have medications filled at the pharmacy and the robot counts their pills, she said.
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