Robots Fill Prescriptions at Walgreens Automated Fulfillment Centers

Drug store chain Walgreens is expanding a system of huge fulfillment centers — some as large as a city block — where robots package prescriptions for patients, The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday (Oct. 2).

The system cuts the workload on pharmacists by about 25% and will save the company about $1 billion annually, the Journal reported. According to the Journal, the changeover will let pharmacists engage in more-profitable activities such as reaching out to patients and giving vaccinations.

“This frees up the capacity of our most-skilled professionals,” Rina Shah, a group vice president overseeing pharmacy strategy at Walgreens, told the Journal. “We looked at our system and said, ‘Why are we filling prescriptions the way we did in 1995?’”

A robot-run center outside Dallas, according to the Journal, fills 35,000 prescriptions for 500 stores every day. Humans still handle prescriptions that aren’t easily managed by robots, such as those for inhalers, according to the Journal.

Rush prescriptions and those for controlled substances are filled by pharmacists, the Journal reported.

The nationwide shortage of pharmacists has prompted Walgreens to cut hours at one third of its 9,000 U.S. pharmacies and to entice pharmacists with signing bonuses of as much as $75,000.

The Journal quoted Alecia Lashier, chief automation officer at pharmacy robots company iA, that the use of robots is drawing interest from small chains and independent pharmacies, too.

“Small chains up through the larger chains are all facing the labor shortage as well as increased demand for services,” she reportedly said. She said the company operates about 1,000 fulfillment sites in the U.S. for chains encompassing hundreds of entities, which include hospitals as well as pharmacies. Prescription volume has roughly doubled from before the pandemic, she said. “They’re looking to remove these routine tasks from stores.”

Walgreens owns a stake in iA.

The pharmacy chain explored using automated prescription-filling previously, but found it unworkable in part because of a lack of other roles for pharmacists to make money, the Journal reported, but the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the healthcare landscape, adding new duties for pharmacists.

PYMNTS reported in June that the chief executive of Walgreens said at the time that the chain’s ambition was to double the percentage of prescriptions filled by robots at micro-fulfillment centers.

Read more: Walgreens Plans to Double Robot Pharmacy Use