ABB Robots in Pharmacy Dispensing: Past to Future

For most of history, filling a prescription was hand work. A pharmacist counted tablets on a tray with a spatula, rolled pills on brass manipulators like the one below, then typed a label and checked it all twice. Counting ate much of the day and was the least skilled part of the job.

A historic pill-rolling manipulator in the Kuks Hospital pharmacy museum. Photo: Jiří Sedláček / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Machines started showing up in the 1990s and early 2000s. Hospitals such as the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda put in robots that dropped tablets into bottles and capped them. European pharmacies bought picking robots that store thousands of boxed medicines and fetch any one in seconds.

An Autoscript robot fills a prescription bottle at the National Naval Medical Center, 2003. Photo: U.S. Navy / Seth Rossman

The US is still catching up. On 14 September, BD said Fairview Health Services in Minnesota was the first US health system to run its Vmax 160, a robot that stocks, labels and dispenses packs, including refrigerated specialty drugs. Fairview fills about 20,000 prescriptions a week.

Inside a pharmacy picking robot that stores and fetches boxed medicines. Photo: Dominik Scheid / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0 de)

Big dispensing systems sit in the central fill room, yet plenty of pharmacy work still happens at a bench. ABB's YuMi (IRB 14000) was designed for tight spaces like that. Its two padded arms carry 0.5 kg each and are precise enough to open vials or fill blister cards beside a technician.

ABB YuMi (IRB 14000), a dual-arm collaborative robot for small-parts work. Photo: ABB

ABB's larger GoFa CRB 15000 cobot lifts 5 kg and reaches 950 mm, enough to move totes of stock or load a cold-storage rack. Staff teach it by guiding the arm by hand or with ABB's Wizard block programming, and its OmniCore controller repeats the same path every time.

ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot. Photo: ABB

Next, robots leave the back room. ABB has shown a mobile YuMi concept that drives around a hospital lab on its own, and the same approach could carry medicines to the ward. At home, pill-dispensing robots with face recognition already sit on kitchen counters. A small cobot arm doing refills beside one seems a reasonable next step.

ABB's mobile YuMi robot concept for hospital labs. Photo: ABB

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