{"id":383858,"date":"2026-01-22T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/383858\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T09:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T09:00:07","slug":"how-ai-and-robots-ease-pressure-at-essex-pharmacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/383858\/","title":{"rendered":"How AI and robots ease pressure at Essex pharmacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Patel said they had automated their dispensing process with the aid of a robotic device in its stock room.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It uses barcode recognition to identify an item, pick it up and send it down a chute to waiting staff. Using AI, the robot is also able to automatically prioritise medication with the shortest expiry date.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;A good proportion of those [11,000] prescriptions don&#8217;t need to be checked because the robot and the system are doing that for us,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Patel said the technology would be too expensive to implement at her other three pharmacies, but was a cost-effective solution for their busiest chemist.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Because we&#8217;ve got quite a big clinical arm here, we needed the automation\u2026 to free up the pharmacy&#8217;s time,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I can&#8217;t afford to hire another [robot], but as long as funding is right, this can absolutely support healthcare and the NHS and the ever-growing population.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patel said they had automated their dispensing process with the aid of a robotic device in its stock&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":383859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-383858","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/383859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}