Pharmacy's new robot for checking pill dispensing the first in Taranaki

While many businesses struggle with staff shortages, a Taranaki pharmacy has invested more than $250,000 in robots to free their staff up from packaging prescriptions.

At the start of the year Vivian Pharmacy in New Plymouth purchased a packing and a checking machine for pill dispensing.

The packing machine disperses prescriptions into sachets and the checking machine puts the sachets through and alerts staff if there are any errors.

It’s the only one of its kind in Taranaki and one of only 10 in New Zealand.

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“People say, Oh, you don't have to employ so many staff, but it's actually not about that,” Catherine Keenan, pharmacist and business owner, said.

“It just means that those staff are freed up for other services and spending time with people.”

The team estimates it’s saved them two days of work packing and checking pills every week.

The pharmacy, which employs 20 staff, does a lot of bulk orders for rest homes and as some rest home residents have three separate doses of pills every day, prior to the machines these would have to be packed manually.

They got their first packing machine in 2013 from South Korea, which they called Ricky.

However, Ricky started having issues around Covid, and it became difficult to get parts.

When it came to updating the packing machine they also wanted to add a checking machine to streamline accuracy.

The new machines don’t have name, yet. But the Keenan says it will come.

The checking machine takes a photo of every sachet and is able to scan up to 18,000 sachets an hour.

The machine will alert staff is something is wrong in one of the packets, which they can then correct.

It’s also provided them with some insurance if someone disputes what pills they did or did not receive.

“It used to be a full time looking at every single pocket, making sure that each of the pills was right, now the machine does it,” Amanda Slaats, business owner said.