AUTOMATION OF DRUG DISPENSING: FEEDBACK FROM A HOSPITAL PHARMACY

Background: Ensuring drug circuit security is the ultimate goal for hospital pharmacists. Alarmed by the excessive drug consumption at its on-duty pharmacy, Mohammed V Military Teaching Hospital of Rabat (Morocco) installed a centralized automation for drugs dispensation. This experience is expected to be decentralized to all care units.

Our study purpose is to evaluate automations impact on pharmaceutical drug management, and then to determine limits to be improved.

Resources and procedures: We analyzed, over a period of 10 months, data from the database of the automated distribution system deposited at our on-duty pharmacyin order to determine its usage profile. We also evaluated through a questionnaire the point of view of our 13 pharmacy technicians toward drug dispensing automation.

Results: Over the study period, we got the following results:

- 5446 transactions were accomplished and 8864 drugs unit were dispensed

- Parenteral route drugs are the most delivered (67%)

- Anti-inflammatories and analgesics are the most required (26%), followed by the anti-infective drugs (25%)

- Young technicians did more transactions (63%) than the elders did (37%)

- According to pharmacy technicians, main automations advantages are saving time in locating medications (8/13) and limiting drugs errors (5/13). Otherwise, main constraints are the irregular machine replenishment (10/13) and the reduced capacity for storing all medications (6/13), specially refrigerated and oversized ones.

Conclusion: Automation of drug delivery offers many advantages. However, there are still limits to be improved before its decentralization to all care units.