Walgreens doubles down on robots to fill prescriptions amid turnaround

When a Walgreens retail pharmacy receives a prescription, the system determines whether it needs to be filled at that location or routed to a close-by micro-fulfillment center. Maintenance medications, or prescribed drugs taken frequently to administer chronic health conditions, and refills that do not require immediate pickup are sometimes sent to micro-fulfillment.

On the core of every facility is a highly automated system that uses robotics, conveyor belts and barcode scanners, amongst other tools, to fill prescriptions. The operations are supported by a team of pharmacists pharmacy technicians and other professionals.

As an alternative of staff members filling prescriptions by hand at stores, pill bottles move through an automatic and punctiliously choreographed assembly line. 

Pharmacy technicians fill canisters with medications for robot pods to dispense, and pharmacists confirm those canisters to be sure that they’re accurate. Yellow robotic arms grab a labeled prescription vial and hold it as much as a canister, which precisely dispenses the particular medication for that bottle.

Certain prescriptions are filled at separate manual stations, including inhalers and contraception pill packs. Each prescription is then sorted and packaged for delivery back to retail pharmacy locations for final pickup.

There are other safety and security measures throughout the method, said Ahlam Antar, registered group supervisor of a micro-fulfillment center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. 

For instance, the robot pods routinely lock and signal an error with a red-orange light if a employee attaches a canister to the flawed dispenser, stopping the wrong pills from stepping into a prescription, she said. 

Properly training employees on the centers to make sure accuracy and patient safety can also be crucial, in line with Sarah Gonsalves, a senior certified pharmacy technician on the Mansfield site. 

She said a core a part of her role is to be sure that that technicians can appropriately perform the various tasks in the method. 

Antar, who has worked on the Mansfield site since its 2022 opening, said Walgreens has made improvements to the micro-fulfillment process after considering feedback from stores and patients in the course of the paused expansion. That features establishing latest roles needed to support the method on the sites, resembling a training manager for all 11 locations. 

The facilities also plan to transition to using smaller prescription vials after hearing concerns that the present bottles are too large, in line with a Walgreens spokesperson. They said that may allow the centers to ship more prescriptions per order and reduce costs.

Before Brian Gange’s Arizona store began counting on an automatic facility, he walked into the pharmacy every morning knowing that an enormous list of prescriptions was in his work queue waiting to be filled for the day. 

Now, with help from micro-fulfillment, that list is significantly smaller every day, in line with Gange. 

“We haven’t got to spend as much time on just those repetitive achievement tasks,” he told CNBC. “It really takes an enormous weight off our shoulders.” 

Gange said that offers him and his team time to step behind the pharmacy counter and interact with customers face-to-face, answering questions, providing advice, performing health tests or administering vaccines. 

That sort of attention could make all of the difference for a patient.  

For instance, Gange recalls stepping away for five minutes to take a patient’s blood pressure despite being overwhelmed with tasks while working at a distinct Walgreens location several years ago. He ended up sending that person to the emergency room because their blood pressure was “off the charts.” 

That patient’s wife visited the pharmacy the subsequent day to thank Gange, saying her husband “probably would not be here with us today” without that blood pressure test. 

“I shouldn’t should query whether I even have that five or 10 minutes to examine a blood pressure for a patient,” Gange said. “Micro-fulfillment and centralized services are really what are going to permit us to have the option to try this, to have that point.” 

“That basically allows us to supply higher look after them,” he added.