PCA Services Inc., of Oakville, Ontario has secured a deal with Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre to test a preliminary version of its PharmaTrust system a vending kiosk for prescription drugs. The machine has the sophistication of an automated banking machine, uses advanced robotics and technology to read prescriptions and dispenses more than 150 commonly prescribed drugs. Thomas Paton, Sunnybrook's director of Pharmacy says "There's going to be some fear, some skepticism about it," and "I'm expecting that I'm going to get calls that might say, 'How dare you participate in this?' But my view is that, in the early going, I think I would rather be part of this; it's going to be here whether I like it or not. Let me be part of that solution and work it so it's part of the tools that I can use to advance pharmacy practice to do the things we want to do." The machines are expected to be dispensing drugs in doctors' offices, emergency rooms and workplace clinics. I'll be interested to see how the device manages to decipher the doctor's handwriting... Globe and Mail story here.
