A Forbes article dated November 7th discussed the trend of automation in pharmacies. While the concept has existed since the 1960s, artificial intelligence and machine learning has driven costs down so that even small pharmacies can no integrate automation to increase efficiency and reduce the rate of error to serve more people better.
Current automation can be as simple as automated phone calls to notify patients that their prescription is ready, but include more advanced features ranging from pill counting and liquid measuring to inventory management and updating patient information. But what does the future hold? With big data, automated systems could glean patterns from patient responses to medications and advise potential risk. The article also mentions AI image recognition to read handwritten prescriptions, but given the penmanship of the average doctor, I think that’s still a few years off…
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