What a compelling value proposition! Jan 30, 2010 - Steve Arnold reports in the Hamilton Spectator that hospitals across Ontario will soon have drug-dispensing machines with the capacity of a full-scale pharmacy in their emergency wards. The devices, the product of an Oakville company, are being touted as a way to get needed prescriptions to ER patients, even in the middle of the night. Equipped with a telephone and video link to a live pharmacist, all the patient does is slip a prescription into a reader and then talk to the pharmacist who instructs the machine to prepare the medicine you need. Once the pharmacist is certain you have a legitimate prescription, that the machine has prepared the right potion and it won't interact with anything else you're taking, the drugs are released.
Think of the extension of this capability to larger medical clinics. Not only is there a convenience factor for the patient, but the clinic generates some revenue from leasing out the space and a pharmacist is able to extend their expertise directly to the patients within the clinic.
Do you remember when travel booking web sites first launched and the travel industry was trying to gauge the impact on their business. I can see this type of technology and service having a big impact on physicians, patients and pharmacists in the future. If I were a pharmacist, I would be thinking very carefully about this trend.
Prescription kiosks ready to roll in Ontario Hospitals
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