Saudi Gazette report

TABUK — The General Directorate for Health Services at the Ministry of Defense (MODHS), represented by King Salman Armed Forces Hospital in the Northwestern region of Saudi Arabia, has successfully set up the world's first automated machine to dispense medications.

This achievement will be added to a series of Saudi innovations in the field of technology. It is the first experience of its kind in the world, which will contribute to facilitating the lifestyle, as the device will dispense medicines electronically without the need for the patient to visit the hospital.

The machine consists of a workstation that handles the prescription barcode of the medicines, an interaction screen for the beneficiary to use, a special operating system (robot), in addition to a messaging platform to inform the beneficiary of the readiness of the prescription.

The machine serves the beneficiaries around the clock with a storage capacity of 102-700 prescriptions. It is also distinguished by the fact that it can fill prescriptions containing multiple medications, in addition to the feature of extremely high protection for medicines from damage, tampering, or theft. It also provides statistical data on the dispensed medications to the beneficiaries on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis.

The director of the hospital’s pharmacy department, Olayan Al-Atawy, said the machine works by scanning the barcode attached to the prescription and filling in the required data, and then the beneficiaries will be asked to to select the nearest dispensing machine to their location before the pharmacist verifies through the electronic prescription system the beneficiary’s prescription data.

When the prescription is approved, without having any observations, the beneficiaries will receive an SMS containing the code and the machine's location, in addition to the request status which enables them to head to the machine to dispense the medical prescription within 48 hours. The beneficiaries will be requested to enter their civil record and the verification code sent to their phones, and then they will be able to receive the medicines.

Al-Atawy said that this service, and the other medical services, embodies the wise leadership's care for citizens to meet their needs and facilitate access to medicines in the easiest and best way.

The machine dispenses all medications that are prescribed to any patient, except medicines that require to be stored in very low temperatures, Al-Atawy said, adding that it will shorten the waiting time for patients to receive the medicines from 4 hours in pharmacies to less than 1 minute.

Al-Atawi confirmed that they are currently seeking to create another device within a month from now, after the success of the current experiment.