School of Business | Department of Information and Service Economy | MSc program in Information and Service Management | 2015
Thesis number: 14564
Effects of Enterprise Digital Assistants in medication dispensing operations: Case hospital pharmacy
| Author: | Palomäki, Jere-Santeri |
| Title: | Effects of Enterprise Digital Assistants in medication dispensing operations: Case hospital pharmacy |
| Year: | 2015 Language: eng |
| Department: | Department of Information and Service Economy |
| Academic subject: | MSc program in Information and Service Management |
| Index terms: | logistiikka; logistics; tietotalous; knowledge economy; lääkkeet; drugs; teknologia; technology; sairaalatekniikka; medical equipment; apteekit; pharmacies; sairaalat; hospitals; jakelutiet; distribution channels; varastot; storage; terveystalous; health economics |
| Pages: | 89 |
| Full text: | |
| Key terms: | barcode technology; enterprise digital assistant; hospital pharmacy; healthcare operations management, dispensing; order-picking; medication safety; warehouse management; ICT implementation |
| Abstract: |
OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
In this thesis, I study the effects of introducing automation in the form of barcode-reader enabled Enterprise Digital Assistants and their impact on work efficiency and medication safety in a hospital pharmacy setting. The goal is to determine whether the efficiency of the process can be improved without compromising medication safety. In addition to the quantitative objectives, employee perceptions on the likelihood of success of the implementation are studied to include a more qualitative approach on the subject. DATA AND METHODOLOGY The data include information on different phases of the medication dispensing process taking place in the HUS Hospital Pharmacy in Helsinki, Finland. My sample consists of 80 341 orders processed on 143 days between July 2014 and April 2015. I use statistical analysis to calculate pre- and post-implementation process throughput times and error rates. Employee perceptions are measured with a questionnaire and interviews. FINDINGS OF THE STUDY It is possible to improve the efficiency of the order-picking process by automating the pharmaceutical inspection phase with the EDAs without increasing the dispensing error rate. Firstly, The efficiency of the order-picking process improved by 34% from 1.40 rows per minute to 1.87 rows per minute. Secondly, the EDA implementation bears potential for further process streamlining, as the pharmaceutical inspection could be performed without an additional hospital pharmacist, freeing resources to perform more knowledge-intensive work tasks. The questionnaire and employee interviews revealed that employee perceptions on the usefulness and the ease-of-use of the implementation would seem to affect positively on the perceived likelihood of success of the implementation. Even though the implementation project had faced several difficulties, the employees considered that the devices are useful and thus have faith in the success of the implementation. |
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