Monitored dosage systems (MDS) can play an important role in helping some patients manage their medicines. For pharmacies providing the service, however, preparing those packs can involve a significant amount of repetitive work.
Each patient’s medication needs to be reviewed, selected, organised and packaged correctly, with the finished MDS checked before it reaches the patient or care setting. As the number of patients increases, so does the amount of time the pharmacy team needs to dedicate to preparing those packs.
For a pharmacy looking to expand its MDS service, the challenge is therefore not simply how many packs can be produced. It is how the pharmacy can handle more work without allowing MDS preparation to consume an increasing amount of staff time.
Why can MDS become a time-consuming process?
Preparing MDS manually involves a series of individual tasks that have to be completed for every patient and every medication cycle. Even when each task is relatively straightforward, the combined workload can become substantial when a pharmacy is managing a large number of patients.
The process also requires consistency. Medicines need to be selected and placed into the appropriate dose positions, with the finished pack checked before it is supplied. Changes to a patient’s medication can add further complexity, particularly when the pharmacy is managing a large number of different medication lines.
For a pharmacy already under pressure from dispensing, services and day-to-day patient queries, finding enough time for MDS preparation can become increasingly difficult.
This is one reason automation is becoming an area of interest for pharmacies looking to develop their MDS offering. Rather than replacing the pharmacy team’s role, the aim is to reduce the amount of repetitive manual work involved in producing the finished pack.
Where can MDS automation make a difference?
The biggest opportunity is to automate the parts of the process that are repetitive and time-intensive.
Instead of relying on staff to manually place every individual medicine into an MDS, an automated system can dispense the required medicines into the packaging as part of a controlled workflow. Depending on the system, verification can also be built into the process, helping the pharmacy team identify potential issues before the finished pack leaves the machine.
This can change the way the team spends its time. Staff are still responsible for the professional decisions, checking and oversight involved in supplying medicines, but less of their working day needs to be spent on repetitive packing tasks.
That distinction is important. The purpose of automation is not simply to produce more packs as quickly as possible. It is to make the overall MDS workflow more manageable.
Pouch or blister card?
One of the first considerations for a pharmacy looking at MDS automation is the type of packaging it wants to provide.
Pouch-based systems package individual doses into labelled pouches, while blister-card systems place medicines into defined compartments within a card. Neither approach is automatically right for every pharmacy. The most suitable option will depend on the patients being supported, the pharmacy’s existing processes, the packaging formats it uses and the volume of MDS it needs to produce.
That is why flexibility matters when choosing an automated MDS system. A pharmacy should consider not only how quickly a machine can fill packaging, but how easily it can fit into the service it already provides.
How do universal cartridges change the process?
Another consideration is how the automation system handles different medicines.
Some automated packaging systems use drug-specific cartridges, meaning a particular medication needs to be associated with a particular cartridge. This can create additional inventory and administration requirements as the pharmacy adds new medicines to its MDS service.
RapidPakRx and RapidCardRx, available through AcornRX, take a different approach by using universal cartridges. According to AcornRX, the cartridges can handle a broad range of oral solid medicines, including different tablet and capsule types, without needing to be calibrated for an individual drug.
For the pharmacy, the attraction is not simply the technology itself. A more flexible cartridge system can make it easier to manage the variety of medicines involved in MDS without maintaining a large collection of drug-specific cartridges.
That can become particularly relevant as an MDS service grows and the number of medication lines being handled increases.
RapidPakRx: automating pouch-based MDS
For pharmacies using adherence strip packaging, RapidPakRx is designed to automate the production of medication pouches.
The system uses 20, 30 or 40 universal cartridges and incorporates machine vision verification into the packaging process. This means dispensing and checking can be brought together within the same workflow rather than relying entirely on separate manual stages.
For a pharmacy producing a significant number of pouch-based MDS packs, this can help reduce the amount of repetitive filling work required from the team while maintaining a structured process for verification.
The wider benefit is the capacity this can create. If less staff time is tied up with manual pouch preparation, that time can potentially be redirected towards other pharmacy activities and patient-facing services.
RapidCardRx: automated blister-card packaging
For pharmacies using blister cards, RapidCardRx provides a similar approach while working with card-based packaging.
The system can be configured for different blister card formats, including single-medication and multi-medication cards. Like RapidPakRx, it uses universal cartridges and incorporates verification at multiple stages of the filling process.
This gives pharmacies another option when considering how automation could fit into their MDS service.
The important point is that automation does not have to mean changing the entire way a pharmacy delivers MDS. The right system should complement the packaging format and workflow that makes sense for the pharmacy and its patients.
Automation should fit the wider pharmacy workflow
It is easy to look at an MDS machine in isolation and focus on how many packs it can produce. But the machine is only one part of the process.
Medicines still need to be ordered, received, stored and prepared. Prescriptions need to be managed, patient medication changes need to be accounted for and completed packs need to be checked and supplied. If automation speeds up one part of the process while creating a new bottleneck somewhere else, the overall benefit can be limited.
This is why the wider workflow should be considered before investing in MDS automation. For example, a pharmacy may already be looking at automated medication storage alongside MDS. AcornRX’s MDS solutions are designed to sit within a wider dispensing workflow, alongside systems such as Ward Cabinet and CD Cabinet storage.
Looking at automation as part of the pharmacy rather than as a standalone machine can therefore help ensure that investment solves the right problem.
Creating capacity for a growing MDS service
For many pharmacies, the attraction of MDS automation is ultimately about capacity.
If a pharmacy can reduce the amount of time its team spends on repetitive preparation, it may be able to support more patients without simply adding more manual workload. That can make it easier to develop an existing MDS service while allowing staff to spend more time on the wider responsibilities of a modern community pharmacy.
However, automation should not be viewed as a shortcut around the professional processes involved in MDS. Patient suitability, medication stability, checking and the pharmacy’s own procedures remain important considerations. Current UK guidance emphasises that MDS and other multi-compartment compliance aids are not appropriate for every patient or medicine.
The role of automation is therefore to support a well-designed service, making the repetitive elements of the process more efficient while leaving the pharmacy team in control of the clinical and professional decisions.
Finding the right MDS automation solution
There is no single MDS automation system that will be right for every pharmacy.
The best solution will depend on the pharmacy’s current MDS volume, packaging format, medication mix, available space and existing workflow, as well as its plans for future growth. These are the factors that should be considered alongside machine capacity and technical specifications.
At AcornRX, we start with the pharmacy rather than simply recommending a machine. Our MDS automation solutions include RapidPakRx for pouch-based packaging and RapidCardRx for blister-card packaging, alongside wider automation options that can form part of the pharmacy’s overall workflow.
By understanding how the pharmacy operates today and where it wants to go next, it becomes easier to identify where automation can genuinely create capacity and improve the MDS process.
Find out more about MDS Automation from AcornRX and explore how RapidPakRx and RapidCardRx could fit into your pharmacy workflow.
