In Italy already 8 pharmacists died because of COVID-19. Technology can help facing such a terrible threat: Let’s protect our pharmacy staff and patients.
We don’t know so much about COVID-19 and we also don’t know how we can defeat it, but it is absolutely clear that we have to keep the pandemic under control as soon as possible. It is also clear that we have limited health-care resources and being doctors, nurses and pharmacists in first line against corona virus they are the ones risking more at the moment. Unfortunately, the number of health-care staff infected by COVID-19 is growing more and more: all over the world doctors, pharmacists and nurses are suffering and, in some cases, also losing their life just because they came in contact with patients.
This is a terrible event and it happens more and more all over the world. In Italy already 114 doctors and 8 pharmacists died because of corona virus and many others are now infected. That’s terrible from an ethical point of view (i.e. it’s really terrible thinking that someone is risking his life just for trying to help someone else) and it is extremely dangerous for the already stressed healthcare system: in a moment where any possible resource is crucial, losing a growing number of qualified people also for a short period can have severe consequences.
It’s absolutely necessary to protect them and to give them any tools and instruments the actual technology has for making them serving our communities in the most secure way. Pharmacist are playing a key role in the protection of our communities and we have to avoid them to run any unnecessary risks. So we have to reconsider also the traditional process of prescription dispensing: once the pharmacist has received the prescription and prepared the medicines for the patients, so once the patient’s medicines have been managed under the control of the pharmacist, should the pharmacist run the risk to meet any patients just for delivering a bag?
You can significantly reduce the risks involved in this part of the process by integrating Pharmaself24 in the pharmacy: once the pharmacist has prepared the medicines instead of putting the parcel on a rack and waiting the patient coming at the counter, the pharmacist can load the bag into the storage of the robot and then the Pharmaself24 does the rest: notifies patient by text message that the medicines are ready for collection so collection can be done 24/7 just entering a pin code. Simple, fast and secure.
Here an example how technology can help pharmacist, how automation can reduce risks, how improving safety in a key process of the healthcare system: the delivery of medicine to patient.
