Hey Reddit, I'm interested in the area of pharmacy automation and how to become an entrepreneur in this area. I'm looking for people who are willing and able in their free time to be able to discuss this topic, share ideas, fail, build, and try new things. The end goal is basically not to automate ourselves out of careers, but really just create or expand upon the existing niche. Trying to learn more about this and maybe one day have some sort of prototype. I know this sounds extremely nerdy, but think it'd be a lot of fun.
Can anyone point me in a good direction for this or have any thoughts?
Hello Previous or Current or Future Pharmacy Technicians!
We are designing a pharmacy automation machine that can help reduce errors that occur in traditional pharmacies.
If you are a previous/ current/ future pharmacists who have work experience in
- Retail pharmacies (Walgreen, Walmart, CVS, etc)
- Independent pharmacies
and if you are willing to help us out, please DM me. Our team really needs your user input to improve the design.
This is out of curiosity, but what kinds of automation are used in your pharmacy? In mine I've used a couple of old RX Systems machines, a Webster Care system from Australia, SynMed XF (my baby), we also have DOSIS, and just recently removed a CASI system that was a POS.
Hello, fellow -pharmacists! Currently I study in the USA as an international student, and my dad has a chain of drug stores in our country. He wants to place robots in a new store. I've done a little research on the topic, and found that aesynt, swisslog and ScriptPro appear to be leading in the sphere. Yet, I would like to know which one is the best one. Thank you UPD: thank you all for your replies!:)
We have DoseEdge for our IVs. I think it's useful when used appropriately (i.e. expensive drugs and high risk drugs) to prevent errors. However my site uses it for EVERYTHING, even pre-made maintenance bags so that bogs us down a lot.
For our UD side of things, we have McKesson's Medshelf. So that's more of a barcode scanning system and not so much automation. I have also floated to sites that use the actual McKesson MedCarousel and the robot. Both of them very neat and space saving but again only when used appropriately. And of course we have AcuDose as our dispensing cabinet. We use this guy a lot so that our cart fills can stay small.
How about the rest of you guys? still visually checking everything? or is a robot sending all your doses and CRNA's even using electronic boxes?
I understand that automation cannot and will not eliminate pharmacists-- but surely it can reduce the amount of job openings? As far as I understand it pharmacists will have to shift to other roles more focused on counseling and patient interaction. But why get a pharmacist to do basic clinical tasks? Why not a nurse practitioner or a PA?
I might be totally off target here so forgive me. I am interested in potentially pursuing the field and naturally these things concern me.
Thanks in advance.
Hello /r/Pharmacy I was curious about the types of inventory tracking systems in place in retail and hospital pharmacies (in particular expiration date tracking). Also, are there currently any manual processes that would be much easier if they were handled in a database inventory system?
A little background, my mother, brother, and uncle are all PharmDs so I always hear discussions regarding pharmacy related subjects every holiday gathering. As an engineer I'm always interested in ways to improve efficiency. I became interested when my mother and brother were discussing the inefficiencies they have in their inventory management (sounded like opportunity). Is this a common problem for all pharmacy settings (hospital vs. retail) and scales (scripts/day)?
While I'm sure there are complete inventory/automated solutions, are there any smaller tasks that could be automated but don't require the entire complete solution systems?
Any info or insight is appreciated. :)
Andrew
Edit: I should note, the objective isn't to eliminate jobs more so to eliminate tedious tasks. Those may unfortunately be one in the same, idk? Not the motivator though. I work with Excel, Access, SQL, and VBA quite a bit for work and wanted to see if there was an opportunity to help other industries with my skill set. That's the motivator, not jobs. Just FYI.
The US and Canadian government forecasts for pharmacists is not great. Are you guys worried that the field will eventually be automated, or taken over by big tech delivery solutions, decreasing the demand for pharmacists and lowering the salaries even further?
