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UK’s largest medicine-dispensing robot is helping with the vaccine rollout

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Pharmacy support worker Sandy McIntosh checking the dispensing robot. (Credits: Herald & Times / SWNS)

The UK’s largest medicine dispensing robot has helped with the vaccine rollout using Amazon-style technology.

It is responsbile for supplying 2.1million Covid jabs in Glasgow.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde is the only health trust to have such an advanced form of technology, with 72,000 Covid jabs processed per week.

Orders are placed online and the entire high-tech production line works 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with the aim of having as few errors as possible as 80 per cent is automated.

At any one time, the Pharmacy Distribution Centre will carry some 10,000 lines of medicines, and 100,000 items are processed per week.

Medicines are packed into blue boxes which are in turn packed into vans and transferred to the acute sites.

The UK’s largest medicine dispensing robot has helped with the vaccine rollout in Glasgow. (Credits: Herald & Times / SWNS)

Technology is an important part of the process, and a few weeks before the first lockdown the team took delivery of a smaller robot, which is refrigerated and can look after medicines that require being stored at cold temperatures.

Claire Aliyar, chief pharmacy technician at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said: ‘The team have been working really hard throughout the pandemic – especially at the very beginning, because it just happened so fast.

‘We tried to get as much stock in as we possibly could before it all started and we did manage to get some but it was going out as soon as it came in.’

Chief pharmacy technician Claire Aliyar. (Credits: Herald & Times / SWNS)

The team provides medicines for hospital wards, other acute settings, care homes and prison medical units.

It includes the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital and Glasgow Royal Infirmary, the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley and the Inverclyde Royal Infirmary in Greenock.

Ms Aliyar added: ‘The team were fabulous, they increased their working hours and came in for extra days.

‘They just rolled up their sleeves, all with the same purpose – to get medicines out for the patients at their time of need.’

The team was then asked to set up a vaccine distribution centre from scratch.

Pharmacy support worker Kaitlin Stevenson with crates that are being filled with packs of medicines by the dispensing robot. (Credits: Herald & Times / SWNS)

Ms Aliyar said: ‘We did a small proportion of NHSGGC’s vaccine programme before, but nothing on the scale we needed.

‘It became huge, a massive part of our workload and we took the new warehouse space from scratch and now we’re supplying more than 70,000 doses each week – more than 2.1 million doses to date.

‘The more prepared we are, the less pressure there is in the wards and departments.

‘It’s been a huge success. I’ve never worked with a team like this.

The dispensing robot. (Credits: Herald & Times / SWNS)

‘We all look out for each other whether we’re having a good or a bad day.

‘We’ll always be here for each other and the patients, making sure their medication gets to them when they need it.’


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