When is the right time to invest in a fully automated hub?

 Sales and Marketing Director, Louise Laban, takes a closer look at which pharmacies should be considering a fully automated hub and spoke model.

I’ve worked in the pharmacy automation industry for several years now. I know from first hand experience that the main hurdle preventing pharmacists from implementing automation is whether it will be worth the investment. As solutions become more sophisticated – so does the cost.

That’s why we will only advise you to opt for our fully automated FLOWRx Hub line when you have the prescription volumes and store numbers to make it a worthwhile investment. We are committed to our product working as much as you are so we’ll only suggest an automated hub line if we feel it is the right solution for your business.

Our automated FLOWRx Hub will label, sort, bag and tote your original packs for patient prescriptions accurately and at speed and includes an automatic labeling unit (ALU). This FLOWRx ALU significantly speeds up your workflow by automatically applying labels to packs for which there are matching patient orders. The packs are inducted into the labeler at the induction station. After labeling the packs are sorted by patient at the SORT stations that are available with our manual line.

We know every pharmacy is different and that’s why we designed our solution to be modular and scalable, enabling your technology to grow as your operations do. For example, there may come a time when a single automated hub line isn’t enough and we’d then work with you to put in place a double automated hub line which will help you increase capacity and speed up existing processes even further. A number of our customers have already taken this step.

So how do you know a fully automated FLOWRx Hub solution is the right option for you and your business? Well a number of factors need to be considered but as a general rule of thumb the following examples would be a good place to start:

Single automated hub: Servicing somewhere between 17 and 35 stores and processing 8,000 items per month with an 80/20% split for repeat prescriptions and walk-ins.

Double automated hub: Servicing over 35 stores and processing 8,000 items per month with an 80/20% split for repeat prescriptions and walk-ins.

Obviously there are many more elements to take into account and we work closely with every prospective customer to understand the details of their business, workflows and goals before providing any proposal.

As a starting point to any conversation we invite you to use our solutions estimator which will allow you to start discovering which FLOWRx product might best meet your needs. Why not discover the future of your pharmacy today?