Pharmacy automation- a bit of history

The Financial times reported that George DEVOL, the American inventor of the first ever Robotic Arm machine died last week. He initially called his invention a “programmed article-handling device”

Inspired by reading about Asimov’s fictional robots, he invented the robotic arm in the mid-1950′s. The first Devol machine was to be used in a manufacturing environment in the General motors plant in Trenton New Jersey and was installed in 1961. The machine did spot welding and also moved hot metal.

The Japanese were quicker than the Americans to see the potential of the invention and cashed in on it far quicker in the early days.

It is reckoned that there are now more than a million industrial robots in use worldwide, including an ever increasing number of Pharmacy Robots. Devol’s first ever robotic arm machine can be seen in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington.

In the UK we are behind most other European countries in our uptake of pharmacy automation. It is of note that the UK multiple pharmacy chains have unusually not shown much interest in adopting robotic picking technology, preferring to stick with manual handling and picking, despite the clear advantages in dispensing error reduction and increase in speed of picking offered by automation.