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Medicine Robotics

Walgreens Turns To Robots To Fill Prescriptions (cnbc.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the they-took-our-jobs dept.
Walgreens Boots Alliance is opening robot-powered micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S. to fill customers' prescriptions as the role of stores and pharmacists change. CNBC reports: Inside of a large facility in the Dallas area, they fill thousands of prescriptions for customers who take medications to manage or treat high blood pressure, diabetes or other conditions. Each robot can fill 300 prescriptions in an hour, the company said -- roughly the same number that a typical Walgreens pharmacy with a handful of staff may do in a day.

Walgreens Boots Alliance is opening the automated, centralized hubs to keep up in the fast-changing pharmacy industry. The pandemic has intensified the drugstore chain's need to stay relevant as online pharmacies siphon off sales and more customers have items from toilet paper to toothpaste delivered to their doorstep. The global health crisis has also heightened demand for pharmacists, as hospitals and drugstores hired them to administer Covid vaccines and tests. That has forced Walgreens and its competitors, CVS Health and Rite Aid, to rethink the role of their stores and pharmacists.

By 2025, as much as half of Walgreens' prescription volume from stores could be filled at the automated centers, said Rex Swords, who oversees facilities as Walgreens' group president of centralized services, operations and planning. That will free up more of pharmacists' time to provide health care, Brewer said in an interview with CNBC's Bertha Coombs. "We're doing all of this work, so that the pharmacist has an easier job, so that they can get back to being front and center, building a relationship with that patient and interacting the way they were trained -- the work that they love to do," she said. Pharmacists will continue to fill time-sensitive medications and controlled substances at local stores as the company expands its use of robots.
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Walgreens Turns To Robots To Fill Prescriptions More

Walgreens Turns To Robots To Fill Prescriptions

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  • Now we won't have to hear those bullshit excuses how someone can't provide a woman with birth control because of some made up religious belief.

    The First Amendmen'ts religious freedom applies only to how one worships. The government can't interfere with you practicing your religion as well not imposing any national religion. That was its original intent, for those who like to claim they are "originalists".

    With robots now filling prescriptions, women need not fear Republicans violating the Ninth Amendment's

    • Condoms are literally everywhere, and are not prescription medication. What on earth are you on about?

      • Condoms are literally everywhere, and are not prescription medication. What on earth are you on about?

        You do know that birth control pills have other uses [youngwomenshealth.org] than just preventing ovulation, don't you?

      • How do you treat endometriosis with a condom, genius? :-p
      • BTW, setting aside the fact that even if you *could* treat endometriosis with a condom somehow, why the hell should a pharmacy have any right to refuse to sell prescribed medication? If they don't want to be in the business of selling medication, why are they even pretending that they are?
        • The problem is, you give some people just the smallest bit of authority, and they become tyrants in their sphere, looking for any situation, small or large, over which they can wield their "power." Pharmacists; school board members; local cops; etc.
    • The Electric Monk would ponder your statement and would probably beg to differ.
  • We've become a nation of pill poppers. High blood pressure is generally treatable without medication and diabetes (excepting type 1) is entirely preventable. If we need so many pills that not even the pharmacists can keep up then we have a serious problem.
    • I would like an answer but to address your points this is about automation so that Walgreens can save money. The pharmacist can keep up just fine Walgreens just doesn't like paying them. Or the pharmacy techs who hand you your pills.

      Also is someone who's having a hard time losing weight not because I'm lazy but because I have back problems that make significant amounts of exercise difficult, are you people who go on about how fat Americans are can bite my shiny metal ass. And no my back problems aren't

      • Maybe the Walgreens in your town can keep up but ours can't. After a mass exodus of pharmacists last year (the entire pharmacist staff and most of the techs), they had to close down all inside services. Drive through only and those hours were limited. They finally have the inside of the pharmacy open again but good luck getting your prescription.

        Walgreens has been squeezing their pharmacists for years and those pharmacists have finally had enough. When they leave it isn't unusual for the techs to follow

        • Walgreens can't compete for pharmacists so they HAVE to turn to automation.

          Nah, this is strictly a choice that Walgreens executives made. They *could* compete, but the executives choose to treat their highly trained people like shit, so people decide not to work there. The free market at work. You want to see pharmacists in Walgreens? Stop treating them like disposable shit.

          • You are right. I should have said "won't compete."

          • I do not know this is strictly a Walgreens choice or problem. Other pharmacies chains are going to this model as they cannot keep up. My local pharmacy is open 12 hours a day / 7 days a week and they are busy. That is 84 hours a week. That is at least 2 people per position just to cover hours. So they either have to cut pharmacy hours which customer will not like. Or shift staff to less busy hours but they need that staff to fill during less busy hours. Or reduce the workload by automating. Yes hiring more
      • Unless you're talking about extremely strenuous exercise for long periods of time, lack of exercise isn't why you're fat. You only burn 100 calories per mile running; about the same as walking (humans are *extremely* efficient runners). The answer is in what you eat and how your body processes it. People do try to oversimplify things and try to claim it's 100% "calories in/calories out", but it's more like "calories absorbed/calories out", where both of those vary substantially due to factors you have littl

        • But exercise isn't really a major factor for the level most people are doing it.

          Well, there's your problem, isn't it? It's a matter of time: no one gets fat overnight. Likewise, no one gets skinny overnight. If people put in as much time getting not fat as they did getting fat, they might not be fat.

          I'm not trying to be mean. Professional cyclists eat upwards of 9000 calories per day, and you never see any fat ones. Sure, "most people" aren't going to train at that level, understandably. Only a select few get paid to do that. But during the summer, when I ride for 2.5 to 4 ho

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dbialac ( 320955 )
            For exercise, exactly. You don't even need to put in that much time. I trail run for about an hour 3 days a week. The biggest factor is that it increases my metabolism, as it does yours. And for those wanting to change, don't start out trying to run. Instead, walk, then walk faster, then do short spurts of running with walking in between, then run. Too many people take on too much up front. You'll feel when it's time to go on to the next stage and understand this will take time, but you'll start feeling the
        • You are correct that exercise does not actually burn that many calories. The main factor for weight gain is simply eating too much. But there is more to exercise then just burnt calories. In addition to the health benefits of exercise, when one exercises they typically have a lower rate of overeating. So something happens to the brain chemistry that allows people to better control their hunger urges. If one needs to loose weight, even limited exercise can be hugely beneficial. So long as one understan

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbialac ( 320955 )
          It's not what you eat, it is caloric intake combined with metabolism. Exercise improves your metabolism, but you can lose weight without exercise and just changing your dietary intake, but that does include avoiding sugary drinks and diet drinks. I lost over 80lbs by changing how much I eat, not what I eat.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )
        Diet is way more important than exercise. I lost over 80 lbs largely because I changed my diet and my calorie intake to 1800 per day. Exercise helped increase my metabolism, but reducing caloric intake was without a doubt the biggest factor. My diet, by the way, is simple: eat whatever I want, but keep within a certain number of calories per meal and snack. That's where vegetables come in: they fill you up, are very low calorie and can be combined with other high calorie items. One example: go to Burger Kin

    • I's sure invermictin was your preferred COVID-19 treatment too.

    • If we need so many pills that not even the pharmacists can keep up then we have a serious problem.

      We do have a serious problem: food makers are killing us for profit. Currently, I have to drive an extra five miles just to get to store that sells meat that doesn't doesn't have sugar added to it. Even still, I cannot find any location that sells meatballs that don't have sugar added.

      So, how can I eat healthier when food companies are harming my health to slightly boost their profits? The free market answer is that all items should be taxed to cover the corollary hospital bills that will result from the

  • I haven't received points in a while despite usually receiving 15 or so most days and it seems there is very little moderation on the site as of recent?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      I stopped getting points around the time I started calling out CCP shills and the fact that /. is owned by cryptopushers. I've been here since the 90s, glad it's not just me.

    • I haven't received points in a while despite usually receiving 15 or so most days and it seems there is very little moderation on the site as of recent?

      If I had points I'd mod you offtopic

      • haha - though I'm unsure how else to voice a concern about this site which I've been reading for decades...

        something isn't right about the site for the past week or two - I didn't get any notifications about these replies either

        without the moderation system, the forum here is relatively worthless to read through...

    • I've noticed this as well. There are very few comments showing moderation as of late.

      Though I can't speak for receiving mod points. I find the only way Slashdot gives me any is if I ignore the site for a couple of days.

    • I usually get them every few days as well, but radio silence for a week or so. Could be broken by meta-moderation; my last time doing it I was trying to shut down some political shills plastering nonsense everywhere.

      It does make the site much harder to tolerate when moderation isn't working.

    • I had some - 5, whoo! - a few days ago, maybe a bit more than a week, but nothing since. And it was wonky for a while before that, too. I dunno what the pimply faced youth are doing down in the salt mines of /..

      • yeah, I bet the technical staff is on vacation - this site seems pretty broken for the past week or two sadly

        hope they fix it soon, the community is already a lot smaller than it was a few years ago...

    • I don't think it is working properly.
      I've had to lower my score filter to prevent everything from being filtered.

  • Robots cost less than pharmacists and lab techs .. just another way of squeezing more dollars out of the pockets of insurance and consumers and put less in the pockets of trained personnel.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hoofie ( 201045 )

      I've seen robotic dispensaries in two hospitals in Perth, Australia : one of which was a brand-spanking new Children's Hospital built by the State Government and 100% free. In the latter the pharmacy staff thought it was a great idea.

      It's quicker than a human and cuts down medication errors as you get EXACTLY what's written on the electronic script written by the doctor. There is a still a pharmacist in the loop who checks the script before it's dispensed.

    • It is pretty much the natural evolution. "Filling Prescriptions" by placing bulk pills into a bottle is not really a value-add for anyone. The automated systems have been around for a long time-- in the US at least a few HMOs use them in their medical office buildings, and IIRC it could handle about 85% of their volume.

    • I have no idea where to lie on the economic philosophy spectrum, but the obvious question is why should we care more about pharmacists than we do about every other job that's been automated?

      I don't for one second doubt the knowledge and training pharmacists receive. Yet, for many purposes, they don't really use their training for the average prescription. I do see them available for consult at times, and good on them for those cases. Even things like drug interactions can be done automatically.

      But if we're

  • For various reasons, I am in a pharmacy quite frequently lately, getting prescriptions. A relationship of sorts with the people there is strangely important or good. No one else in the world really knows why I collecting X or Y, but these people do, and they smile and they wish you well, and they generally seem to mean it.

  • "We're doing all of this work, so that the pharmacist has an easier job, so that they can get back to being front and center, building a relationship with that patient and interacting the way they were trained -- the work that they love to do," she said

    Yea. They might keep 1 token "pharmacist", you know, the newest one because they're the cheapest. The rest will get shown the door because money. Who fucking believes these lies? Why do they feel them to be necessary at all? It's not like anyone expects them to even pretend to have any humanity.

    • The retail pharmacies only ever had one pharmacist on staff at a time; everybody else was a minimum-wage technician (or nearly so).

    • Yea. They might keep 1 token "pharmacist", you know, the newest one because they're the cheapest. The rest will get shown the door because money.

      From what I can tell there were not enough pharmacists or techs before the pandemic. After the pandemic there is more of a need. Also most pharmacies I know could never hire "1 token pharmacist" due to the hours required at the pharmacy.

      Who fucking believes these lies? Why do they feel them to be necessary at all? It's not like anyone expects them to even pretend to have any humanity.

      Read the summary. There is a practical need. Most pharmacies are small. They need a lot of staff just to keep up with current demand. There are not enough space nor staff availability so how do you propose to keep up with demand.

      Also bear in mind, some modern pharmacies hav

  • I find it strange that Walgreens is only just now deploying these. I have seen prescription filling robots in various small town pharmacies in the last 10 years. The ones I’ve seen are giant beige cabinets about 8 feet tall, 8 feet long, and 3 feet wide, and appear to be loaded with various medications in slots at the top, and when an order comes in, it chatters, and then dumps a labeled and filled pill bottle out the side. A ‘tech’ grabs it, sticks it in the little pharmacy bag, confirms

    • Beware the false economy (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The reason for the pharmacists is you need someone who knows what they're doing filling the prescriptions. Moreover, if you need custom-made medicine, they can do it. Having that capability available near you is rather vital, since the need to use it can strike at any time and then is usually fairly time-sensitive.

      Filling prescriptions centrally and shipping can work, but you want the system to be robust against suddenly no shipping being available for whatever reason too. So if you replace all the pharmac

      • Also centrally filled prescriptions are probably only practical and economically feasible for certain prescriptions. Any prescription of small doses or needs to be filled right away would not be done by a central facility.

        For example I needed steroid pills due to an allergic reaction. Those 10 pills were filled within an hour by a local pharmacy. It is doubtful that having 10 pills shipped once would not have been feasible to the machine filled and I would not have wanted to wait a day.

        On the other hand,

    • It sounds like this will be done centrally, which I suspect means an extra day before it's ready for pickup. But if they invest their savings into fixing their backend systems, web site, and mobile app, it'll be worth it, but they don't much seem to care how pathetic they are.
  • Automated pharmacies at large scale have been a thing since the 80s. I have an unusually high amount of exposure to this field and what they show in this article is no different than what others have been doing for decades. Theyâ(TM)re finally getting with the times. It just makes more economic sense to central fill and ship to your stores next day than to pay 2-3 pharmacists in each store to do a fraction of the work. Plus all the technicians.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbialac ( 320955 )
      Especially since the pharmacy staff are now unemployed and looking for work and unable to get their own prescriptions for their own medical needs. Robots aren't a fix, they're the disease.
      • I don't know about you but the shortage of available staff is fueling the need for not automation not the result of it.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbialac ( 320955 )
          The shortage of staff available to Walgreens is poor treatment of employees. My locally-owned pharmacy has a ton of staff as does the local CVS.

          • As does mine, and they cannot keep up. There are 5 or 6 people working in a tiny space sometimes. The other thing that most people may not know is some pharmacies have one or more filling machines. But these machines have to be small to fit in the space and do not work with all medications. Having talked to some pharmacists, they are not very concerned with being replaced by machines due to increasing demand and regulations still require them to interact with the customers for a variety of reasons.

            I do not

  • Would this mean no more bullshit about the pharmacy being closed on weekends? I mean, not sure I mean bullshit in that if there are staffing shortages, overworking the staff they do have is something I cannot get behind - but at the same time, people need medication refills on weekends too.
    • I am pretty sure labor laws still prevent companies from overworking people.
      • I would argue that, unfortunately, that is at least partially hindered by how much BS has been spread, and as a result how many people are either unaware of, or afraid to exercise their rights.
        • My local pharmacy is open 12 hours a day on week days and 10 hours on the weekends. That is 80 hours a week. For every position you need at least 2 people according to labor laws.

  • That will free up more of pharmacists' time to provide health care

    Lol, yeah right, AFTER you make them redundant.

  • I have never understood why the FUCK it takes 30 minutes to count out 30 pills.

  • The whole theory of pharmacists in the US is severely flawed. These folks are required to be highly educated in pharmacology. But their actual job consists of counting pills. The claim is that they prevent dangerous drug interactions. Really? You don't even need AI to do that with a computer.

  • on a brighter note the only issue is have with this is what do you do when the computer messes up and gives you the wrong stuff.
    who is accountable. and is it a case like chip and pin. where every one pretends the tec is infaluable and its all your(the consumers fault)
    give me a human any day. even with there anti abotion or woke ideas

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