In the past, pharmacists were focusing on product compounding and dispensing. Nowadays, pharmacy profession has moved from a product-oriented to patient-oriented with multidisciplinary team, which required reduction of pharmacist’s workload and rely on Automated Dispensing System (ADS) to reduce those workloads. Investing on the ADS has a financial risk. It is suggested to evaluate its performance before implement. Simulation models are developed to investigate possible risks and expect highest benefits from the investment. The aim of this study is to develop a simulation model for investigate the implementation factors and design new business processes for implementing the ADS. This research is conducted at the Out-Patient Department of public hospital under Ministry of Higher Education Science Research and Innovation (HESRI) with special administration system by firstly modeling an Integration Definition for Function Modeling (IDEF0). Then it would be beneficial to analyze workflow and implementing simulation models by Arena software version 16 to predict the situations on different assumptions to get the most suitable situation. This study focuses on two performance indicators, dispensing time which the hospital target is patients received medicine within 10 minutes, and pharmacist workforce. The results showed that the dispensing time, which achieve the target and full time equivalent (FTE) of pharmacist of ADS model 1 and ADS model 2 were 99.31%, 99.18% and 9.01, 12.16 respectively. Compared to the current system, only 94.5% of patients achieve targets and required 26.4 FTE of pharmacists. In summary, both model 1 and 2 can reduce dispensing time and pharmacist workforce.

@inproceedings{oscm-2019-534,
  title={Simulation Modeling for Automated Pharmacy Dispensing System: A Case Study in Hospital},
  year={2019},
  author={Premrudee Soontranan and Duangpun Kritchanchai},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Operations and Supply Chain Management, Vietnam, 2019},
  doi={10.31387/oscm410159}
}

Premrudee Soontranan, Duangpun Kritchanchai (2019). Simulation Modeling for Automated Pharmacy Dispensing System: A Case Study in Hospital. In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Operations and Supply Chain Management, Vietnam, 2019. https://doi.org/10.31387/oscm410159