How Can Pharmacy Automation Help in Preventing Dispensing Errors?

The dispensing error is the discrepancies that happen between the written prescription and the actual drug given. These mistakes or errors can happen if the pharmacy staffs read it wrong or at times delivers it to the wrong person. Dispensing failures can also be seen as the breach in the last safety link of drug use. It might lead to serious morbidity and mortality issues if patients or their caretakers are not vigilant. These errors occur mostly due to:

Communication failures
Work overload at the pharmacy with less manpower
Interruptions leading to distraction
Messy pharmacy leading to package labels related problems

Dispensing errors account for nearly 21 percent of the medical errors happening in the US. Using pharmacy automation can help them eradicate the above reasons for committing errors, thereby ensuring patient safety and maximising customer satisfaction. Like for instance, using Synmed automated system helps in dispensing solid oral medications right in pill organisers or blister cards as they are referred to.

Using automation helps in making the system efficient, speedy, and accurate. These automated systems are mostly connected to the pharmacy’s management system. They take care of all operations right from the time of taking the prescription to dispensing. As there is no human intervention, chances of making mistakes in reading the prescription or giving the wrong dosage is eliminated completely.

The pharmacy workflow is streamlined. Errors are reduced and the manpower that was earlier occupied in pharmacy can now be utilised in other patient care activities. Automated systems take care of all operations – not only packing, and dispensing, but also retrieval and storage.

When it comes to tracking capabilities, the manual system cannot match the capabilities of automated system. If pharmacies are dependent on manual processes for inventory, then it is very much possible that either they can overstock or understock a particular drug, but all these problems can be eradicated completely by using an automated system.The automated systems in place help the pharmacies or hospitals to track supplies in a proper way and replenish them well in time.

These systems are best in streamlining both the inpatient and outpatient drug dispensing process and that too in a cost effective manner.