Robot designed to reduce pharmacy errors

Chicago -- U.S. hospitals are starting to use pharmacy robots designed to eliminate life-threatening medication errors, Loyola University Hospital says.

The Chicago hospital said it is the first in the Midwest to use the PillPick, a two-armed robot that places single doses of medication in small plastic bags marked with a bar code to identify the drug. A nurse can scan the bar code on the medication bag along with the bar code on the patient's wrist band. The computer will sound an alert and an pop-up warning will appear if it is the wrong drug or the wrong dose.

The $1.5 million robot is manufactured by SwissLog Healthcare Solutions.
Loyola said the robot is designed to eliminate the type of serious human error involving actor Dennis Quaid's twins at a California hospital last year. The infants were supposed to receive 10 units per millimeter of the blood thinner heparin. Instead they received 10,000 units.

A pharmacy technician had mistakenly placed the vials with different dosages in the same drawer. Loyola said another common mistake is to mix up drugs with similar spellings.

Copyright 2008 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.