Meet Tameside Hospital’s new pharmacy robot who dispenses without delay!

The pharmacy at Tameside Hospital recently welcomed a new member of staff called Roary to the team.

But Roary isn’t just any employee: they work all day and night without needing a rest, and in just seconds they can pick out the right prescription among thousands of medicines. That’s because they’re a robot.

Roary is the name given to a new automated system designed to store, manage and dispense medicines safely and efficiently. Named for the “roaring” sound it makes when picking out medication, Roary will support the pharmacy team to work more efficiently by handling many of the administrative tasks involved in running a busy medicines dispensary.

This frees up time for our pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to focus on the more complex tasks and those all important face-to-face interactions with patients.

It will also mean patients can get their prescribed medicines more quickly. In the past, the pharmacy team have had to manually scour the dispensary shelves for each prescription. Now, the team can simply input the required medicines into a computer, and the robot will select the packet with the matching barcode and dispense it through a hatch on the other side. It can even group medicine packs according to which ward they are heading to.

Crucially, the robot can dispense medicines directly to clinical staff when the pharmacy is closed, helping get medicines to patients without delay all through the night. On-call out of hours pharmacists can instruct the robot from their laptops at home, cutting out the time they would need to travel back to the hospital.

The robot is part of a £583,000 project which includes a full refurbishment of the pharmacy dispensary, funded by the Trust.

The dispensary stores thousands of medicines which are used by both outpatients and within hospital wards. The new robot can store these medicine packs in a compact space and can organise them to maximise room on the shelves. It keeps close track of what’s in stock, alerting the team when medicines are running low. It also helps by monitoring which medicines are nearing their expiry date, ensuring they are used in the right order to reduce waste.

“Roary is already making a huge difference to our pharmacy team. We’re seeing increased efficiency and faster turnaround times, plus better stock control with fewer medicines going to waste.” said Stacey Starr, Chief Pharmacy Technician at Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust.

“It also supports workforce wellbeing by taking some of the more repetitive, high-volume tasks off the hands of our skilled pharmacy team. Most of all, the robot is incredibly accurate, and all of this will contribute to improving patient safety.”