Robot designed to reduce pharmacy errors

CHICAGO, April 26 (UPI) -- U.S. hospitals are starting to use pharmacy robots designed to eliminate life-threatening medication errors, Loyola University Hospital says.

The Chicago hospital said it is the first in the Midwest to use the PillPick, a two-armed robot that places single doses of medication in small plastic bags marked with a bar code to identify the drug. A nurse can scan the bar code on the medication bag along with the bar code on the patient's wrist band. The computer will sound an alert and an pop-up warning will appear if it is the wrong drug or the wrong dose.

The $1.5 million robot is manufactured by SwissLog Healthcare Solutions.

Loyola said the robot is designed to eliminate the type of serious human error involving actor Dennis Quaid's twins at a California hospital last year. The infants were supposed to receive 10 units per millimeter of the blood thinner heparin. Instead they received 10,000 units.

A pharmacy technician had mistakenly placed the vials with different dosages in the same drawer. Loyola said another common mistake is to mix up drugs with similar spellings.