Please tell me about events that made you consider introducing TabSight.

I wanted to increase compound medications and felt that inspection support devices would help relieve the pharmacists’ stresses associated with expanding compound medications. Moreover, mistakes will disintegrate pharmacist-patient trust system. While a pharmacist’s eyes are essential, the TabSight provides an extra level of accuracy.
In fact, I waited about two years before introducing the system. A Yuyama salesperson first told me that they were developing such a product.

After waiting so long, I assume that you had high expectations. Did the outcome meet these expectations?

Yes. No, it surpassed my expectations. It has been three years since I introduced the system and there have not been any serious accidents. Data from the 60-cassette charty-III Ultra-Compact Dividing Packaging Machine can be linked to TabSight, so there were two or three minor errors, with one being a human error.

A new medical institution is opening next year, and we will be able to accept prescriptions from them as well. The lack of errors has earned us trust and through TabSight we now have the support of many facilities.

Many pharmacies are reluctant to take the plunge due to the prices and other concerns.

If thinking just about the machine then, yes, it seems expensive. But if you look at the bigger picture, it is an effective investment. By avoiding errors with TabSight, we earned the trust of elderly care facilities and are now handling more dispensing for facilities. By taking in many new patients, we have recovered the money used to purchase the TabSight.
I don’t think that we can reduce the number of employed pharmacists with TabSight, but it does motivate pharmacists in their work. Compound prescriptions have a much higher volume compared to outpatient prescriptions, so it puts more responsibility on the pharmacist. TabSight takes off some of these associated stresses.

What before and after changes have you seen in your operations with introduction of TabSight?

Previously it was a two-step process of packaging the tablets in a packaging machine and then visually checking them. TabSight adds an extra step in between these two steps but, for example, if all the tablets are marked as faulty, then we know immediately that there is a problem with the packaging. It adds an extra step, but we can determine an error much faster than visually checking each package individually.

Generally, the tablets are visually double-checked by two of our pharmacists after passing through the TabSight. However, when working alone, there is no time for double-checking, so it is extremely helpful.

Has the number of errors decreased since having TabSight?

To be honest, mistakes have not been reduced to zero. But the stress burden has come down immensely. If I am concerned that I made a mistake, I can go back and confirm it with a photo image, and I appreciate the fact that even small debris like PTP shells will be picked up.

Would you be in trouble without it?

If I didn’t have TabSight, I could still dispense medication, but now that I’m familiar with it, it does make operations much easier. If I receive an inquiry from a facility after the delivery, there is normally no way to confirm the actual content of the medications delivered. TabSight keeps photographic records which I can refer to if there is an inquiry. There are cases where the medication is spilled at the delivery end, so having photographic evidence offers us security.

It doesn’t reduce time, but the added insurance is valuable. The additional processing adds more time, but I handle this by explaining this to outpatients for single-dose packages in advance.