Wall-E lands Swindon-based pharmacy job

Robots reduce the possibility for human error in the pharmacy

The two most recent recruits to the Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will never need time off, or sick leave. They are both robots, and part of a £350,000 programme to reduce the time patients wait to receive prescriptions.

The robots, named Wall-E and Eve after characters from the film Wall-E, are made by ARX, a UK-based provider of pharmacy automation systems.

Sarah Davis, pharmacy operations manager, said: “The robots will help speed up prescription discharge times and free up time for pharmacy staff to go onto wards and support direct patient care where they are needed.”

The robots log and store pharmacy drugs using a sophisticated infra-red scanning system linked to pharmacy IT software. On receipt of a prescription, pharmacy staff request the item from the robot, which scans the code and is able to immediately locate where on its shelves it has stored the drugs. A robotic arm then collects the drug and places it on a conveyor belt, which takes it to the dispensary.

Davis explained: “The pharmacy robot is helping reduce waste by improving stock control and reducing the costs of expired drugs. It also helps us minimise any prescription errors. As with any process in a hospital there is small risk of human error. The robot reduces this by sorting and retrieving the drugs using the bar code technology, followed by dispensing and checking by trained staff, so it helps makes the whole process even safer.”

Pharmacy assistant Pat Lancelotte said: “When I heard that we were going to have a robot installed I had no idea of what to expect. We have had to get used to a different way of working, but I think that the robot has made the whole dispensing process easier and much more efficient. There is also less chance of dispensing errors.”

The robots were dubbed Wall-E and Eve after competition among pharmacy staff to come up with names for the newest members of their team. It is not known whether R2D2 and C3PO were in the running.