CASE STUDY
www.swisslog-healthcare.com
Data Integration Leads to Efficient
Pharmacy Inventory Management
at NewYork-Presbyterian
Brooklyn Methodist Hospital
A TRADITION OF INNOVATION
NewYork-Presbyterian (NYP) Brooklyn Methodist Hospital is a 650-bed acute care
teaching hospital. As part of one of the nation’s most comprehensive academic
healthcare systems, the hospital is af�liated with the prestigious medical school Weill
Cornell Medicine.
According to Pharmacy Manager Yang Fan at NYP Brooklyn Methodist, the hospital has
a long history of embracing innovation. “From the pharmacy’s perspective, we started our
journey toward automation more than 20 years ago with the McKesson robotic system,”
he says. It worked well, but as the robot was reaching its end of life, NYP Brooklyn
Methodist was also embarking on a major renovation project. “It was just the right time
to explore other options since we would be able to build out around whatever solution we
chose,” explains Pharmacy Site Director Fabienne Vastey at NYP Brooklyn Methodist.
The pharmacy ultimately decided on the Swisslog Healthcare BoxPicker® and PillPick®
systems because of their fully integrated, end-to-end functionality.
NEW PHARMACY AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
“One of the things we liked best about the Swisslog Healthcare robotic systems is that
they are all-in-one systems,” says Vastey. When considering the PillPick, “It can not
only store and dispense medications — it can repackage them, eliminating the need for
additional resources or outside personnel to manage that process.”
The BoxPicker from Swisslog Healthcare is a secure system that automates medication
storage and retrieval with intelligent robotic picking to help optimize pharmacy workflows.
Its modular design allows for ambient, refrigerated and dual-temperature storage,
and multiple workstations, which means the system can grow as pharmacy needs
change. The PillPick system is unique in its ability to automate unit-dose packaging
and dispensing, so it handles the entire process from
manufacturer packaging to patient-speci�c dispensing.
Yang Fan
Pharmacy Manager
~ NYP Brooklyn Methodist
Fabienne Vastey
Pharmacy Site Director
~ NYP Brooklyn Methodist
CASE STUDY
www.swisslog-healthcare.com
“
By implementing these Swisslog Healthcare systems, NYP Brooklyn Methodist’s goal
was to streamline pharmacy operations, reduce errors, and improve patient outcomes.
Getting to that point proved to be something of a challenge, however.
Hardware issues impacted accuracy and created a lot of manual work, with staff
having to review rejections and load medications back into the robot. “These issues
really needed to be addressed in person by an experienced Swisslog Healthcare �eld
technician,” explains Fan. “But we were about three months into the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was dif�cult just to get clearance for people to even travel to us since we were right in
the middle of one of the country’s hotspots at the time.”
After months of collaboration and working through pandemic challenges, the pharmacy
was able to get the help they needed onsite to begin working through obstacles.
Also, weekly meetings were instituted with Swisslog Healthcare service engineers to
continually work on optimizing the robot further. As a result, the pharmacy operation has
achieved the ef�ciency rate they were striving for from the outset.
“We package about 300,000 unit-dose tablets a month using the Swisslog Healthcare
robotic systems,” says Fan. “We’re currently running at about 97% ef�ciency — meaning
only about 3% of tablets are rejected for whatever reason.” The ef�ciency is the same for
the Swisslog Healthcare dispensing functionality, he says, with 97% to 98% accuracy,
which is critical for ensuring the right medications get to the right patients.
THE CHALLENGE: SYNCING DATA ACROSS THREE
PHARMACY SYSTEMS
Once the Swisslog Healthcare system was up and running, Fan says they faced another
challenge — syncing inventory data across multiple systems.
The hospital uses Epic Willow as its overarching pharmacy inventory management
system, the Swisslog Healthcare systems for the central pharmacy, and Omnicell
automated dispensing cabinets on hospital floors. “Drugs come in through Epic,” Fan
begins as he describes the process. “They are then physically loaded into the Swisslog
Healthcare BoxPicker and PillPick systems. From there, medications are distributed to
patient care units — whether as floor stock or in Omnicell cabinets.” The problem they
were having, he says, is that the three systems weren’t talking to one another. “The Epic
system was not getting updated with accurate inventory levels.”
This breakdown in data sharing led to signi�cantly inaccurate counts on the roughly 5,000
drugs the hospital keeps in inventory — leading to issues with over- and under-ordering.
“When inventory counts are off, we can’t order accurately,” says Fan. “We’re also faced with
questions about why we have certain drugs on the shelf we’re not using and why we’re
running out of medications we actually need,” adds Vastey. This is compounded, she says,
when there are industry-wide drug shortages. “We have a central pharmacy, but we have
other locations too. Knowing how much is where — having an accurate count is critical for
everyday decision making on what medications need to be ordered and prioritized.”
While there is a lot of messaging and communication standardization in the industry, like
Health Level 7 (HL7) for streamlining the transfer of clinical
and administrative data between various applications —
there’s nothing for pharmacy inventory systems.
“
One of the things we
liked best about the
Swisslog Healthcare
robot is that it is an
all-in-one system.
It can not only
store and dispense
medications — it can
repackage them.”
We package about
300,000 unit-dose
tablets a month using
the Swisslog Healthcare
robotic system. We’re
currently running at
about 97% efciency.”
Yang Fan
Pharmacy Manager
~ NYP Brooklyn Methodist
Fabienne Vastey
Pharmacy Site Director
~ NYP Brooklyn Methodist
CASE STUDY
www.swisslog-healthcare.com
“The automation is there, but they are all standalone systems from individual companies
with unique communication platforms,” says Fan. “All these different inventory areas really
need to talk to each other for the pharmacy to run ef�ciently.”
After consulting with peers and colleagues and conducting extensive research — Fan
concluded that there was no existing solution. So, he and his team set out to establish
their own standards.
THE SOLUTION: BUILDING AN INTERFACE FOR
INFORMATION SHARING
To address their data sharing challenges, NYP Brooklyn Methodist’s pharmacy embarked
on a project to build a three-way interface between the systems utilized from Epic,
Swisslog Healthcare, and Omnicell. Led by Fan, this involved working with software
engineers from each of the providers to develop a robust interface to simplify data
synchronization. The goal was to ensure that inventory data from the BoxPicker and
PillPick systems, as well as Omnicell cabinets, were accurately reflected in Epic —
ultimately helping optimize ef�ciency and empower decision-making.
THE RESULT: ACCURACY AND EFFICIENCY
Inventory counts went from being accurate only about 5% of the time — to 99% of the
time. “Now we have trust in all of the systems,” says Fan. “We know inventory data is
correct and can make well-informed decisions to ful�ll our mission of delivering the
highest-quality patient care.”
“Fixing data synchronization between the systems was major for us in so many different
ways,” says Vastey. “We were spending a lot of resources checking the accuracy of drug
counts every day.” Fan agrees, saying there are also a lot of downstream bene�ts to
having accuracy in the inventory data. One positive outcome is tied to another quality
improvement project he’s been working on to reduce medication requests from doctors
and nurses coming into the pharmacy. “In December, we successfully decreased the
number of messages we received about missing medications by 26% — and we expect
that downward trend to continue because of our optimization interface.”
Fan is currently working on a case study, which will be published this year, that maps out
the inventory management interface project in more detail. “I think at the end of the day,
we want to help other central pharmacies like ours function more ef�ciently with the best
practices we’ve established,” says Fan. “The dream for all of us is to have accurate data
as a foundation — and then build smarter and smarter automation from there. I think the
work Fan and his team have done is an amazing �rst step,” Vastey adds.
“
“
I think at the end of the
day, we want to help
other central pharmacies
like ours function
more efciently with
the best practices
we’ve established.”
Te dream for all of us
is to have accurate data
as a foundation – and
then build smarter and
smarter automation
from there. I think
the work Fan and his
team have done is an
amazing frst step.”
Yang Fan
Pharmacy Manager
~ NYP Brooklyn Methodist
Fabienne Vastey
Pharmacy Site Director
~ NYP Brooklyn Methodist
The new PillPick® Octave manifests robotics to:
—
Package and label the largest variety of drug forms into unit doses
—
Optimize pouch design to reduce plastic material used
—
Store more than 50K packaged unit doses
—
Dispense packaged meds on one patient-specific
PickRingTM for bedside verification
—
Deliver comprehensive reporting on-demand
Package, Store, and Dispense...
now with enhanced usability and accuracy!
your medication workflow
swisslog-healthcare.com/pillpick
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