Category: Pharmaceutical Vending Machine

Vending Machines Supplied With Breastfeeding Equipment

Posted on by John Van Horn

Vending machine technology has certainly come a long way in the last several decades. No longer are vending machines only designed to provide you with a quick snack in between meals, or something to drink when you’re thirsty at work or school. Medical vending machines and similar types of automated solutions are making people’s lives easier across a wide range of different industries on a daily basis. Case in point: a new type of vending machine is specifically designed to provide working mothers with the tools they need to breastfeed their children while on the job.

It’s a situation that is all too familiar to women who are trying to maintain a career and raise a family at the same time: they’re on the job and ready to breastfeed, only to realize that they’ve forgotten a storage bag or a valve or some other important item at home that morning in their haste. Their child needs to eat, but they don’t have what they need and find themselves in a tricky predicament.

Thanks to a new type of vending machine technology, these fears are well and truly a thing of the past. A vending machine that was recently installed at Johns Hopkins Hospital allows working mothers to purchase a wide range of different breastfeeding tools and equipment at a moment’s notice. It is the first of its kind, though it certainly will not be the last.

The breastfeeding equipment vending machine stocks everything that a mother would need to successfully breastfeed her child, from storage bottles to nipple cream to pump accessories and everything in between. The machine was created by Mega Stoltzfus, who is employed by Johns Hopkins in the Office of Work, Life and Engagement.

Stoltzfus indicated that inspiration hit her when she was walking through an airport and realized how far vending machine technology has come even in the last decade. As someone who previously needed to work odd hours and breastfeed to the job herself, she decided to work directly with a manufacturer to design a specialized vending machine solution for people like her.

Because the type of equipment that is being sold in the vending machine is considered to be an employee benefit, it is all available at a steep discount. Any mother who finds that she needs to use the machine can pay for her items using a debit or credit card – it really is that simple.

Working mothers who are not employed by Johns Hopkins won’t have to wait long to get in on this new technology. Other institutions around the country have already expressed interest in similar EMS supply vending machines of their own.

Source:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/maryland-family/now/bal-johns-hopkins-introduces-a-vending-machine-for-breastfeeding-mothers-20140710-story.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2708524/Vending-machines-containing-breastfeeding-equipment-rolled-Baltimore-hospital-attempt-cater-working-moms.html

ASU Student Health Center Does Not Live Up To Student Demands

Posted on by John Van Horn

One of the many positive attributes of the Student Health Center at ASU has to do with how forward-thinking the people that run it actually are. Not only does it allow students to make appointments on the Internet, but it also features both pharmaceutical vending machines and advanced medical procedures that are not available in any other similar location in the area.

Despite this, however, a recent study that was conducted realized that the ASU Student Health Center is still not living up to the demands of the students that actually go there, regardless of how advanced the facility may be on paper.

One of the many issues that students from ASU have to deal with involves longer than average wait times for the services they need, even if they’ve used the online portal to make the necessary appointment ahead of time. The director of the facility, Allan Markus, indicated that this was a problem with the building’s construction and had nothing to do with staffing or other types of services offered. The building was last expanded in 1969, he says, and simply does not offer the space required to meet up with the demands of the expanding school around it.

Things have not improved very much for the students since 2011. According to StatePress.com, the average appointment for a non-specialist is usually averaging around four days. More than that, the average time that a student has to wait to register for an appointment at all can be over an hour and a half in some extreme circumstances.

The facility is also in something of a Catch-22 situation. All modifications to the center are handled via fees that are billed to student accounts. Because there are too many students to handle, the quality of the service that the students are literally paying for by way of tuition is suffering as a result. At that point, it becomes a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy that is hard to break away from.

One of the ways in which ASU Student Health Center officials could relieve many of these issues, however, has to do with wider adoption of medical vending machines across the facility. College medical vending machines are a great way to automate certain processes that used to take a great deal of time, money and energy to see through. If a student was coming into the facility to fill a prescription, for example, they wouldn’t necessarily have to wait in such a long line in order to do so.

Medical vending machines can also be a great boost to the staff, as they provide easy access to the important types of equipment that they are likely to use while treating students on a daily basis.

Robot Inventory Drug Control at University Health Services

Posted on by John Van Horn

The pharmacy at Penn State University’s Student Health Center has employed a robot lovingly named “Rex” to do everything from count pills to fill prescription bottles by way of automated pharmaceutical inventory control.

Rex is officially known as a “collating control center robotic prescription-dispensing machine,” which is essentially an automated medical vending machine on a much larger scale. Doris Guanowsky, the senior associate director at University Health Services at Penn State, says that this is exactly the type of technological innovation that is allowing them to serve and care for a greater number of people with each passing day. Rex is currently being used to fill the prescriptions of employees, students, retirees and everyone in between.

Guanowsky indicated that it is not common for a university to have this type of technology at all, let alone working in the Student Health Center. However, the huge volume of patients and prescriptions that the Center is responsible necessitated this emphasis on the best that modern technology has to offer. Over the 2013 to 2014 season alone, University Health Services filled more than 163,000 prescriptions. To put that into slightly different terms, that equates to between 600 and 1,000 prescriptions each and every day.

Filling a prescription is a lot more than just putting pills into a bottle. Patients have to be communicated with, insurance claims need to be properly filed, labels need to be printed en masse and more. By automating a large portion of these processes and delegating that responsibility to Rex, the Center is not only able to keep costs down but can also turn over a higher number of prescriptions per day.

In many ways, a college pharmacy vending machine solution like Rex is powered on similar technology to the type that UCapIt has been incorporating into its solutions for over 80 years. UCapIt provides a wide range of different technological solutions that healthcare providers depend on daily. The CAP 5, for example, allows healthcare professionals to have complete control over the dispensing of the widest variety of products and medical supplies. The CAP 5 Refrigerated adds in the ability to control an environment’s climate, increasing the total number of items that can be stored based on those conditions.

One thing is for sure: between the solutions that UCapIt provides and the ways in which medical centers like the one at Penn State are embracing modern technology, everyone is benefiting – from patients to healthcare practitioners and everyone in between.

Benefits of Using Pharmaceutical Vending Machines

Posted on by John Van Horn

Dispensers-TrioAn average U.S. adult takes more than 11 prescription medications, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, and senior citizens fill more than 31 prescriptions annually. The need for prescriptions contributes to the high cost of medical care, but some companies have found a way to circumvent the middle man.

Pharmaceutical dispensing machines for stable patients receiving prescriptions for diagnosed illnesses is becoming a cost and time-saving solution. This prescription dispenser machine allows consumers to pick up prescriptions after hours, which can be helpful for busy individuals and families to avoid long lines and lengthy conversations in the traditional pharmacy.

The Process

The process for filling a prescription at a healthcare medical vending machine is not much different compared with a traditional pharmacy prescription. A consumer phones a pharmacy to order a prescription. A pharmacist fills the prescription and adds it to a prescription dispenser machine where a consumer can pick it up, using a passcode, and paying with a credit or debit card.

Other pharmaceutical vending machines will accept prescriptions from the patient. These prescription dispensing machines are used overseas and in the U.S., which can be advantageous for busy hospitals, clinics, pharmacies and rural communities that have less access to medical care. Pharmaceutical supplies can also be among the vending machine products.

Some pharmacy dispensing machine companies require the patient to speak with a pharmacist by video phone before the prescription can be dispensed.

The Advantages

While the traditional pharmacist is helpful in the cases when a patient is prescribed a new, unfamiliar drug, because she can help explain potential side effects and discuss any concerns, a familiar drug obtained by refill may not require the human interaction element. Bypassing it with a pharmaceutical dispenser machine can save time and money, and improve customer service through a patient-centered model.

Other advantages of prescription vending machines include removing the barrier to patients feeling empowered to handle health-related matters more independently.