Government to launch self-service medicine dispenser
To use the machine, all a patient needs to do is register for the service, after which they receive a card that’s similar to a bank card.
SOUTH Africans will soon obtain their medication from self-service ATM-style machines. This was one of the announcements made by the South African Ministry of Health today at International Aids Conference taking place this week in Durban.
The Pharmacy Dispensing Unit (PDU), currently being piloted at Thembalethu clinic in Johannesburg, is a self-service machine where patients can obtain their medication in the same way people withdraw money at an ATM, a process that most South African are familiar with.
To use the machine, all a patient needs to do is register for the service, after which they receive a card that’s similar to a bank card. To “withdraw” their medication, users simply insert their card into the PDU machine, enter their PIN and select the medication they require from their prescription list.
The machine, immediately dispenses the selected medication, eliminating the need for the patient to wait in queues. The PDU also allows patients to communicate directly with a trained pharmacist directly from the machine using a built-in video conferencing function.
Other technologies announced by the Health Department include the Stock Visibility System, a mobile application that enables medicine availability information at primary health care clinics to be uploaded to a central online data repository.
The camera on the phone can be used to scan the medicine barcode and update stock levels thus enabling health care workers to easily monitor the quantity of medication they have in stock and timeously order medication that might be running low. This will help to reduce the number of stock-outs at clinics.
