New Trends in Smart Pharmacy

Viewed as the “last mile” in the medical process, collecting medication from a pharmacy may seem trivial, yet, in fact, the process significantly impacts the overall healthcare experience. The continuous progress of technology and the rapid development of healthcare have enabled smart pharmacy to emerge as a new approach to healthcare services.

Smart pharmacy, a new future of the pharmaceutical industry, is driven by cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and the cloud, primarily focusing on the use of technological means to improve service quality and meet customer needs while supporting regulatory authorities in establishing standardized drug sales and safe use, expediting drug tracing and traceability efforts, and safeguarding drug safety. In recent years, with the widespread adoption of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and Internet of Things in the healthcare industry, smart pharmacy, as the new future of the pharmaceutical industry, continues to grow both domestically and internationally.

Conventional outpatient pharmacies struggle with pain points such as a high demand for pharmacy staff, lengthy prescription pickup times, inefficient space utilization, and difficulties in tracking medicines. Therefore, the introduction of the smart pharmacy has quickly captured widespread attention, which substantially refined the overall industrial chain. Smart pharmacy also features a series of automated machinery such as automated medicine vending machines, smart dispensers, and smart medicine packaging machines, providing users with more targeted and refined services.

Haier Biomedical’s Smart Pharmacy Dispensing System employs automated information technology that integrates with the hospital information system (HIS), thereby enabling automated, efficient, and accurate medication dispensing in outpatient pharmacies, cutting out waiting times for patients, and allowing pharmacists to focus on pharmaceutical services, all while ensuring that medications are stored under optimal temperature and humidity conditions, meeting storage requirements at all times. In addition to the well-known Fully Automatic Tablet Packaging System and Tablet & Capsule Dispensing Cabinet, Haier Biomedical’s Injected Medication Dispensing Cabinet and Anesthetics Dispensing Cabinet are two automated devices currently gaining popularity in smart pharmacies.

Injected Medication Dispensing Cabinets are mainly used for the smart storage of medications obtained from hospital pharmacies, which can be connected to HIS to enable pharmacists to efficiently manage the dispensing of prescribed medications in accordance with doctors’ instructions.

Anesthetics Dispensing Cabinets are mainly used in outpatient pharmacies, inpatient pharmacies, and wards for the storage and control of specialty drugs, such as narcotic drugs, psychotropic drugs, and high-risk drugs.

As the development of “Internet + Healthcare” progresses, an increasing number of medical institutions are actively developing this approach. In the future, building upon 5G, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies, smart pharmacy is poised to rapidly embrace intelligence and digitalization. Haier Biomedical will remain at the forefront of the industry, consistently driving innovative ideas to advance the development of smart pharmacies, and ultimately achieving resource sharing and optimizing synergies to enhance user experience to make life better, through the intelligent protection of life science.