Trip down medical Memory Lane

03 April 2008

COMEDIAN Dave Spikey took a trip down Memory Lane when he visited the Royal Bolton Hospital to unveil a "robot" which dispenses medicine.

Before his stage and TV career took off, Dave was a former chief biomedical scientist in haematology at the hospital.

Yesterday he switched on the machine, a new automated dispensing system which responds to electronic requests for medication from staff.

advertisementHe said: "It's been great to come back because I still know a lot of people here.

"It's almost like coming home and the pharmacy department has certainly changed. It's really space age stuff now."

The new machine is part of a £600,000 overhaul of pharmacy services at the hospital, which also includes an IT system upgrade.

Developed by Westhoughton-based healthcare IT supplier Ascribe, the automated system uses three picking "heads", which access more than a mile of shelving between them.

Each head operates independently and can dispense up to 1,000 items an hour.

The robot holds 30,000 individual packs of medicines and hospital bosses are confident it will reduce the number of dispensing errors.

Brian Smith, chief pharmacist at the hospital, said: "This will increase safety and the quality of service. It will also free up the pharmacists who, instead of dispensing medication, will now be able to spend time in clinical areas.

"The robot should eliminate any picking errors."