Optimising pharmacy processes in medication delivery service through digitalisation and automation

Area of Science:

• Pharmacy Operations
• Health Informatics
• Process Improvement

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the expansion of medication delivery services (MDS), creating unsustainable, labor-intensive roles in pharmacies.
• Resuming traditional counter services necessitates streamlining manual and repetitive tasks within MDS to ensure operational viability.
• There is a critical need to enhance pharmacy capacity and IT capabilities to manage increased workloads from both MDS and walk-in patients.

Purpose of the Study:

• To determine the effectiveness of Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles in reducing man-hours for medication delivery services (MDS).
• To assess the impact of process automation and digitalization on the efficiency of pharmacy MDS operations over one year.
• To evaluate the sustainability of MDS operations through systematic process improvements.

Main Methods:

• Implementation of two phases of Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles over one year to improve MDS processes.
• Phase 1 focused on digitalizing order-taking and automating data entry.
• Phase 2 involved automating order generation and accounting, including patient information matching for bagging and dispatch.

Main Results:

• Average time for data entry per delivery order decreased from 0.5–2.15 min to 0.08–0.1 min (p<0.05).
• Average time for bagging and dispatch per delivery order reduced from 2.7 min to 0.28 min (p<0.05).
• Sustained improvements resulted in cumulative savings of 11.8 man-hours.

Conclusions:

• Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) cycles effectively reduced man-hours and improved efficiency in medication delivery services (MDS).
• Automation and digitalization are crucial for the sustainability of pharmacy MDS operations.
• Pharmacies must enhance IT capabilities to manage the growing demand for MDS alongside traditional services.