Patient safety benefits

Maximum safety in prescribing and administering drugs, via the integration of a robot drug dispenser into the Columna clinical information system

Safety is the top priority at the Aarhus University Hospital in Skejby – not just for prescribing medication, but also for the correct administration of the drugs. To further enhance its safety performance in this area, the hospital has now introduced a robot drug dispenser.

Skejby Hospital is one of Denmark’s most highly specialised healthcare institutions, with modern buildings, state-of-the-art technology and highly qualified staff. This hospital is a long-standing user of the Medication module in the Columna clinical information system from Systematic. This specialist module handles a comprehensive range of medication processes, extending from both simple and complex prescriptions and prescription records administration to fluids accounting and patient information on the drugs prescribed.

With the Medication module, a patient’s medication details only have to be entered once. This eliminates the kinds of errors that inevitably result from manual transfers of information between doctors’ and nurses, journals and medication charts.

To enhance patient safety still further, a few years ago the hospital decided to pilot the use of a robot drug dispenser. Just as the Columna Medication software module reduces errors on the prescription side, the use of this robot ensures maximum safety when it comes to the actual dispensing of the drugs.

The right dose of the right pill, at the right time

The robot drug dispenser is integrated with the Medication module. This means the data from the doctor’s prescription is sent to the robot located in the hospital dispensary. The robot then packs and delivers the prescribed medicine to the ward in unit dose packs. When it is time for the patient to take his or her medicine, the nurse scans the barcode on the patient’s arm-band and then the individual pack with a PDA that has the Columna Medication module installed. This enables Columna to check for a correct match between the patient, the product, and the dose, time and administration route.

The hospital’s evaluation of the combined use of the Columna Medication module and the robot drug dispenser shows that two-thirds of all prescriptions can currently be packed by the robot unit. The remainder are types of drugs that cannot be delivered in such packs, including injectable drugs and eye drops.

Carsten Schade Larsen, consultant:

‘The medical practitioners here have been using the Columna Medication module for our prescriptions for some years now, which has ...´
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Ane Hansen, nurse:

‘Using the robot drug dispenser with Columna enables us to work more safely, for both preparing and administering medication doses to our patents. Under the old system, surveys ...´
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Henny Jørgensen, hospital pharmacist:

‘Increased patient safety was the objective when we started using the robot drug dispenser ...´
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