The outpatient pharmacy at the University Medical Centre Groningen (UMCG) has been equipped with a new robot. The introduction of the robot is part of a remodelling of the pharmacy, including a new building and more counters.
The pharmacy was formerly called Apotheek de Sprong and will now go by the name Poliklinische Apotheek UMCG. The old location had six counters in the reception hall, which sometimes caused waiting times. The new pharmacy has 11 counters, which will be commissioned in due course. "We are recruiting additional staff and training takes time because this work is complex," explains pharmacist Trea Keizer. "But we hope the robot will also reduce the waiting time a bit."
Supporting pharmacy assistants
The robot Keijzer talks about supports pharmacy assistants. They no longer have to go behind the counter to collect medicines, saving time and walking less. They simply type in a prescription, after which the robot grabs the drugs, labels the boxes and delivers the medication to the right counter.
Among other things, the working method helps increase efficiency. This is necessary as the pharmacy has grown significantly in 15 years. "Since 2012, ordinary pharmacies are no longer allowed to dispense specialist drugs. Large groups of patients depend on us for this," says Trea. "For example, we supply all medication to cancer patients and for lung transplant patients we provide all the medication they need in the first year after their transplant. Each month we send 1,600 to 1,700 packages, throughout the Netherlands. In addition, about 800 patients come to the counter every week."
Cleaning elastomer pumps
The Poliklinische Apotheek UMCG is not the first pharmacy to commission a robot, by the way. Such robots have long been used to automatically pick the right medication, but also to place medication correctly from packaging on the shelves. The RadboudUMC pharmacy has also been deploying a robot to prepare elastomer pumps for use since the beginning of this year. These pumps are used independently by patients at home to administer drugs without the need for an electronic infusion pump. Cleaning the pumps is physically demanding work, with employees injecting the fluid into the elastic reservoir under counter-pressure.
"The trend of patients receiving their treatment at home rather than in hospital as much as possible will only continue," explains RadboudUMC hospital pharmacist Nicole Vink. "Ten years ago we prepared only a few elastomeric pumps per day, now there are already more than several hundred per week and my expectation is that this number will increase even further. So with the help of the robot, we can enable more home drug treatments without physically overloading our pharmacy staff."
Human work remains necessary
Vink: "Human work remains necessary for the robot to function. The robot has to be loaded, the products have to be weighed, numbered and scanned. All human work. But because the robot takes over the physically heavy filling work, there is room to deploy these pharmacy employees for other work as well. And we can only be happy about that, because pharmacy workers are scarce in the labour market."
"In a few places in Europe, this robot is used for preparing cytostatics for administration. This is also dangerous work from a health and safety point of view, but technically less challenging than our application with the elastomer pumps. Filling against gravity and the size of the elastomer pumps means that not every robot can perform this. Elastomer pumps are not yet made by robot anywhere in the world. We therefore notice great interest from all over the world. From all over the world, fellow pharmacists want to come and see us."
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
