06.3.2025 admin
Medication, when prescribed, dispensed, administered and monitored correctly, has the power to transform lives. However, when things go wrong during the dispensing process, the consequences can be serious and even life-threatening. FLOWRx wasn’t just designed to create efficiencies in pharmacies. It was designed with patient safety at its core to reduce the risk of patient related harm.
Sales and Marketing Director, Louise Laban, looks at how pharmacy automation can improve patient safety and how FLOWRx virtually eradicated errors at Lo’s Pharmacy Group.
Medication errors contribute to more deaths globally than road traffic accidents, yet most are preventable with the right systems in place. A 2020 report by the International Federation of Pharmacists (FIP) stated that “unsafe medication practices contributing to medication errors were the single most important preventable factor jeopardising patient safety.”
In England alone, over 237 million medication errors are estimated to occur each year.
The Role of Hub and Spoke Automation in Reducing Errors
A recent impact assessment by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on the hub and spoke model found:
“Automated systems had a dispensing error rate six times lower than manual processes.”
This means hub and spoke automation isn’t just about creating efficiency and releasing capacity, it’s a critical tool in reducing dispensing errors and improving pharmacy workflows.
Lo’s Pharmacy – A Case Study
This has been evidenced at Lo’s Pharmacy group who implemented a FLOWRx Hub two years ago. Since deploying the FLOWRx Hub on January 1st, 2023, it has dispensed over 4.8 million packs. In that time, there has been zero errors processed by FLOWRx Hub technology. In the early days of implementation there were two recorded near misses which were linked to human error rather than the automation itself. Both occurred in the manual overrides process during the quarantine checking stage.
To put the error rate into perspective, pre-hub, Lo’s Pharmacy Group recorded an average of 100 near misses per year and those were only the ones formally reported. Since implementing FLOWRx Hub, the near miss log has become essentially obsolete.
These results speak for themselves, highlighting the accuracy and reliability of a FLOWRx Hub. The technology uses barcode and RFID verification at every stage of the process to ensure the right dose, of the right medication, reaches the right patient every time.
Why Automation Alone Isn’t Enough
While automation significantly reduces the risk of human error, it’s not a one-size-fits-all fix. As the DHSC impact report notes, poor implementation can introduce new risks. Training and change management is crucial to successful implementation and so is applying the automation to your entire workflow. This is why the FLOWRx solution focuses on the entire end-to-end dispensing process – not just one part of it. It is the only pharmacy hub and spoke solution to do so. In addition, pharmacies that implement FLOWRx become partners rather than customers. They have continual access hub and spoke automation experts to support them on the automation journey and to advise on ongoing optimisation of the solution.
The Bigger Picture: Technician Supervision & Patient Safety
As well as expanding hub and spoke legislation, the Government has confirmed that it will be expanding the role of registered pharmacy technicians as part of its supervision plans. This will allow for bagged prescriptions to be handed out without a pharmacist present, provided they have authorised the process. This is a huge step forward for pharmacy, however it still requires pharmacy to tread with caution. During the consultation process the DHSC acknowledged the “potential risk to patient safety” from reduced pharmacist oversight. This makes automation with real-time tracking and alerts more important than ever.
FLOWRx mitigates this risk by:
- Dispensing the bulk of repeat original pack prescriptions offsite with the use of automation
- Guiding staff step-by-step through the local dispensing process, underpinned by barcode technology
- Flagging anomalies in the dispensing process before errors occur
- Recording every interaction for full visibility and traceability
When combined with human oversight, FLOWRx technology acts as a crucial safety net, guiding staff and catching mistakes before they happen.
Designed for Safety, Built for You
FLOWRx was developed by pharmacy hub and spoke experts with extensive experience of pharmacy and central fulfilment. Our goal is simple: empower pharmacies to dispense more safely, more accurately, and more efficiently. Technology like FLOWRx doesn’t just reduce risk, it redefines the standard of care in modern pharmacies.
Lo’s Pharmacy is living proof that the right automation, implemented the right way, can practically eliminate medication errors.
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