Automated Apparatus for Dispensing Medicaments

Abstract

Apparatus for delivering a medicament to a user has a drug vault including pre-packaged product storage containers holding inventory pre-packaged medicament products, and containers holding inventory bulk medicament. A control system is operable to dispense bulk medicament from the bulk product storage containers, to package the dispensed inventory bulk medicament as dispensed packaged medicament products, and to pick and deliver medicament products to a delivery zone.

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]The present invention relates to apparatus such as a kiosk for dispensing medicaments and, more particularly, to an automated apparatus for delivering a medicament to a patient / user which is adapted to be sited at a location remote from but connected a pharmacy support station.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]In this specification, the term “medicament” encompasses drugs and any and all other materials dispensed subject to presentation of a prescription. The traditional means of dispensing prescribed medicaments involves a doctor meeting with a patient and prescribing a medicament based on a particular diagnosis, and then hand writing and signing a prescription for the patient to carry to a pharmacist at a pharmacy location for fulfillment. In recent years, two major advances have occurred in the field of medicament dispensing. The first is electronic prescription capturing methods, systems and apparatus, which improve the overall accuracy and patient rec...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0013]According to one aspect of the invention, there is provided apparatus for delivering medicaments to users, the apparatus comprising a drug vault having a pre-packaged product storage container for containing pre-packaged medicament product, a bulk product storage container for containing bulk form medicament, and a control system operable to effect at least a part of a process to dispense bulk form medicament from the bulk product storage container, to pack as a dispensed packaged medicament product the dispensed bulk form medicament, and to pick and deliver medicament products to a delivery zone. Preferably, at least a part of the control system is commonly deployed in handling both the pre-packaged medicament products and the dispensed packaged medicament products whereby to limit the volume and footprint of the apparatus.

[0016]The bulk form medicament may alternatively or additionally be stored in a bulk product storage container as a liquid. With such an arrangement, an alternative or additional metering mechanism is included that is operable to meter the bulk form medicament as a metered volume of the liquid. For certain liquid medicaments, the bulk storage container can be within a refrigerated zone, whereby liquid medicament stored therein is maintained at a lowered temperature to prevent heat-induced deterioration thereof.

[0023]The control system can be configured for communicating in the network and may comprise means for accessing the user-interface module and the drug vault module, the accessing means comprising a plurality of sensors for providing positional feedback information to the control system for controlling the accessing means, picking the medicament from the drug vault module and delivering the medicament to the user-interface module for delivery to the user. The user-interface module and the drug vault module are preferably dimensionally compatible for interconnectability of multiple user-interface modules and drug vault modules in multiple combinations. Preferably, the control system further comprises a state based machine configured to use a state table comprising states for controlling the control system, the states being associated with the positional feedback information provided by the sensors and based on behaviors to be applied by the accessing means to pick the medicament from inventory in the drug vault module. The control system may apply the behaviors according to increasing levels of aggressiveness to achieve success in picking the medicament from inventory, wherein the success is primarily defined to require no jamming of the control system.

Problems solved by technology

To date, however, the utility of such known medicament dispensary apparatus has been restricted by the limited variety of medications that may be remotely stored or robotically dispensed by them.

Therefore, patients, especially those requiring nonstandard dosing, multiple medications, medications requiring special storage or some form of pre-dispense preparation, are often faced with their medication requirements not being able to be fulfilled at such a known apparatus, thereby requiring a trip to a pharmacy for the balance of the prescription and negating the utility of such a dispensary apparatus.

However, increasing the kiosk capabilities in this way may yield diminishing returns if the expense and complexity of product and operation are also markedly increased.

Additionally, adding these capabilities in such a way as to add significantly to the kiosk volume or footprint may present further expense and logistical problems in the sense of readily obtaining convenient and competitively priced sites for such kiosks.

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