Time-saving impact of two generation model chemotherapy compounding robots on pharmacists’ daily workflow: A long-term evaluation

IntroductionEnhancing the efficiency of anticancer drug preparation enables pharmacists to dedicate more time to providing pharmaceutical care. Although chemotherapy compounding robots are globally widespread, their long-term quantitative impact on pharmacists' daily workflow remains unclear. This study aimed to evaluate the time-saving effects of two robots, CytoCare® and the newer ChemoRoTM.MethodsThe time-saving effect was defined as the difference in pharmacist-involved time (the total time a pharmacist spends on a single prescription) between the assumed manual process and actual combined manual and robotic preparation process. Based on our data, these times were considered to be 9.4 and 2.0 min per prescription, respectively. We also examined robotic accuracy and compounding time to identify factors related to the time-saving effects.ResultsDuring two separate 3.5-year periods, CytoCare and ChemoRo handled 22.1% (14,021/63,464) and 44.9% (42,594/94,913) of all drug preparations, respectively. The median pharmacist-involved time saved per day was approximately 2.5 h with CytoCare and 6.5 h with ChemoRo. Furthermore, ChemoRo exhibited significantly higher accuracy, with the incidence of deviation from the true value exceeding ±5.0% being 0.16% compared to 1.34% for CytoCare (P < 0.001). The compounding times for both robots were similar.ConclusionsThis is the first study to demonstrate that two robots from different generations provide significant, long-term time-saving effects on pharmacists' workflow. The effect with a currently available anticancer robot, ChemoRo, is estimated to create approximately 0.8 full-time equivalents. Thus, their implementation in anticancer drug preparation will be increasingly vital for advancing pharmacist work efficiency and productivity.