According to a new doctoral dissertation, automation of hospital medication distribution processes can significantly improve patient safety and streamline workflows. But, as with any new technology, these things require careful implementation, as stated by the researcher Hanne Ahtiainen, and reported by STT.
Medication errors are one of the most common patient safety risks in hospitals, and they can cause both harm to patients and additional financial costs to treatment units. Therefore, automation of medication distribution reduces medication errors and supports an uninterrupted medication treatment process, especially thanks to improved barcode reading. When done in a responsible way, of course. Hospitals are looking for ways to make operations more efficient without compromising patient safety, and automation seems to offer one promising solution.
Technology-based patient-specific medication distribution increases the accuracy of distribution and frees up nursing staff's working time from manual tasks to clinical work. Technology can also be used to improve the efficiency of drug storage and monitoring of use, which supports the transparency and safety of the entire drug treatment process. In the study, medication deviations were reduced by up to 47 percent.
However, the study clearly emphasizes that automation also brings with it new types of deviations. Therefore, the introduction of new technologies should be carried out in a controlled manner.
"For example, the introduction of smart medicine cabinets can bring with it operating models that expose people to new types of deviations. Medicine can be taken from a smart medicine cabinet in a hurry, deviating from workflows, for example by skipping the barcode scan", Ahtiainen describes.
Hanne Ahtiainen will defend her thesis on March 20th, 2026 at 13:00 EET at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Helsinki. The dissertation is also an electronic publication and can be read here. The work is in Finnish, but the Abstract section is in English.