The UCSF Medical Center has launched an automated-robot controlled pharmacy at two UCSF Hospitals. Once computers at the new pharmacy electronically receive medication orders from UCSF physicians and pharmacists, the robotics pick, package, and dispense individual doses of pills.Machines assemble doses onto a thin plastic ring that contains all the medications for a patient for a 12-hour period, which is bar-coded.The pharmacy system, has prepared, so far, 350,000 doses of medication without error. Nurses at UCSF Medical Center will begin to use barcode readers to scan the medication at patients’ bedsides, verifying it is the correct dosage for the patient. Instead of paying an army of lawyers and paralegals to review documents, software can
