Ontario company attracts "dozens of countries" to its retail telepharmacy machine

Charlene Close of 680 News out of Toronto did an informative write up on Patient Care Automation Services, Inc from Oakville, ON:

Patient Care Automation Services Inc. (PCAS) is the developer of the PharmaTrust® MedCentre which is designed for use in hospitals, pharmacies, medical clinics and workplaces. About a dozen countries are already interested in the product.

It operates much like an automated bank machine - insert your paper prescription into the machine or pick up a phone, it then connects electronically via video to an actual pharmacist who can answer any questions the patient has and then sign off on the prescription before the drugs are dispensed.

The company received a $1.5-million grant from the National Research Council of Canada today that will assist in further development and marketing it across Canada, the U.S. and the UK.

This is the company the Canadian government expressed an interest in within a press release from October 13th, and was previously covered here at the Telepharmacy blog.

UPDATE 1: October 28, more press on the Telepharmacy machine: Fierce Healthcare ran this article, complete with announcements from Canadian government officials from the National Research Council and the Minister of State for Science and Technology's office about funding the project. The article also has new info about the system's use:

Currently, trials are taking place at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, under the supervision of the hospital's pharmacy; there are production sites at the Albany Clinic, in Toronto, and Cambridge Memorial Hospital, in Cambridge, Ont.

The system is under evaluation as a pandemic response platform by researchers at the University Health Network and the company has also just recently received approval to deploy its system in select locations in the UK.

UPDATE 2: Nov, here is the National Research Council's official statement.

A bunch of Press Releases from companies touting telepharmacy

Media Advisory/National Research Council Canada: Government of Canada to Announce Significant Investment in Local Company That Will Benefit Health Care:

PCAS is the developer of the PharmaTrust^TM MedCentre, a telepharmacy dispensing and primary care system. The system is designed for applications in hospitals, pharmacies, medical clinics, workplaces and other locations, providing patients with convenient and safe access to prescription drugs.

Baxa Announces IntelliFlowRx™ to Become DoseEdge™ Dose Management System:

The addition of Preparation Modes earlier this year allowed the system to filter and control the dose queue so that oral dose prep, extemporaneous compounding, tele-pharmacy and TPN manual additions can be tracked in addition to IV dose preparations. DoseEdge also was expanded to support TPN processing – allowing orders to be received from the Baxa Abacus™ Order Entry Software.

Hyland honors customers at OnBase Training & Technology Conference who use the ECM software suite in new ways to get notable results:

Thrifty White Pharmacy - Maple Grove, Minnesota

Operating in five states in the northern Midwest, Thrifty White serves rural communities through 89 drugstores, as well as eight Telepharmacy Stores in communities where access to a pharmacist was not previously available.

Pharmacy Techs' education, roles increasingly expanded, now includes telepharmacy

Modern Medicine's Fred Gebhart published an article today about pharmacy technicians increasing role in running pharmacies and the expanded training and CE that is being required of them in today's (especially in health-systems) pharmacy environment:

More accreditation activity sounds good to Barbara Lacher, BS, R.Ph.Tech, associate professor and assistant director for the North Dakota State College of Science Pharmacy Technician Program. NDSC modeled its technician program based on pharmacy programs focused on professional education. "We don't train somebody to work 'just retail' or 'just hospital,' " Lacher said. "We educate techs to work in all settings, just as we educate pharmacists to work in all settings. That's why we are comfortable with technicians running telepharmacy operations where there is no pharmacist. We know that our techs aren't just trained to perform specific job functions; they're educated professionals."

The underlying cause (a major shortages of pharmacists) isn't mentioned, however, leaving technicians as the only option to run the pharmacy for many health systems, especially in rural areas. While they are increasingly well-trained and educated, patients still need the better-yet educated eye of a pharmacist making the final call on what medications are delivered, making telepharmacy a great option for communities lacking on-site pharmacists.

South Dakota hospital pilots telepharmacy program

The Lawrence County Journal fills us in with an article on the new telepharmacy pilot project in South Dakota's Lead-Deadwood Regional Hospital:

The total cost of the telepharmacy equipment was just more than $27,000 and will save more than $106,500 annually. Funding was provided in part by a payout from the dissolution of the Western Plains Health Consortium, in part by the LDRH Foundation, with the remainder covered by contingency funding.

The telepharmacy unit’s home setting, which is in LDRH, has two high-resolution digital cameras: One observes the activity of the pharmacy tech. The other allows the pharmacy tech at LDRH to display the medication, the label and the physician order so the medication dispensed can be visualized in real time by the pharmacist located in Spearfish or Rapid City.

The system also allows the pharmacist and pharmacy tech to have a visual/audio conversation.

“A pharmacist does not have to be on site,” Smith said. “It saves us significant personnel expenses in pharmacy wages.”

A smaller blurb with much less info was also printed in the Prairie Business Magazine out of North Dakota.