RIYADH: The King Salman Armed Forces Hospital in Tabuk has installed the worlds’ first automated medication device to dispense medicines without visiting the hospital, Saudi Press Agency reported on Tuesday.
The initiative of the General Directorate for Health Services at the Ministry of Defense (MODHS), would add to Saudi Arabia’s remarkable track record of technological innovations.
Director of the hospital’s pharmacy department Olayan Alatawy, has said that the technology is first of its kind worldwide.
The device consists of a workstation that handles the prescription barcode and then notifies recipients when the medication is ready to be delivered.
Device can handle 102 to 700 medical prescriptions
It can handle upto 102 to 700 medical prescriptions. The technology ensures extremely high protection against damage, tampering, or theft of the medicines.
Additionally, it gives data of the dispensed medications to the patients on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis.
Explaining the functioning of the device, Olayan Alatawy said that first it scans the barcode on the prescription and then fills in the required data. After that it chooses the dispensing device closest to the patient’s home before a pharmacist verifies all the details of the prescription.
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Once the prescription request is accepted, a text message is sent to the patient with a code, the location of the device, and the status of the request.
Beneficiaries can then get their medication within 48 hours from the machine by filling in the required information and entering the verification code sent to their phone.
