Advancing Autonomous Medication Management With Next-Generation Dispensing Technology

In an interview with Pharmacy Times at the 2025 American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition, Laura Mark, vice president of pharmacy at Allegheny General Hospital, and Arpit Mehta, director of pharmacy at Allegheny General Hospital, continued their conversation on how IV compounding robotics and next-generation dispensing technology are reshaping pharmacy workflows. They highlighted how automation reduces cognitive burden, standardizes processes, and allows pharmacy staff to focus more closely on accuracy and clinical responsibilities. Mark and Mehta also emphasized the value of digital, task-based platforms in improving technician efficiency and real-time workflow management. Additionally, they discussed how strong technology partnerships and automation investments have contributed to improved staff engagement and patient care outcomes.

Pharmacy Times: From the frontline staff perspective, what workflow or workload improvements have stood out most since adopting IV compounding robotics?

Arpit Mehta: From the workflow perspective, it's really just, honestly, the standardization and them not having to remember. They don't have to do the math. They don't have to think about what the next step is. They don't have to think about whether a filter is needed for an IV medication. All of that is programmed in the protocol. The protocol tells them exactly what to do.

The same thing applies from a pharmacist's perspective. They don't remember what auxiliary stickers to put on or what color to put on, because it's all automated. What BUD do we use? It's automated. So just the busy steps of thinking and trying to worry about what auxiliary things go on are removed. The IV bag is now automated.

They truly focus on the compounding. They truly focus on making sure it's accurate. And again, to Laura's point, it's instant feedback. If it's wrong, the system won't let it proceed. They're going to have to remake it right there in real time. So, I think it's huge from that perspective.

Laura Mark: In my opinion, I think there's also an engagement factor too. When you're talking about working at the top of your license or top of practice, they're actually giving us feedback on how we can make things different and operational for more efficiency. So they have this sort of vested interest as well, because they do feel so comfortable with that system. Getting the frontline staff feedback and being able to implement changes has really helped from an engagement perspective.

Pharmacy Times: With the launch of Omnicell’s Titan XT automated dispensing system, how do you see this next-generation technology advancing autonomous medication management and improving pharmacy workflows within health systems?

Mehta: Very excited about that, honestly. Going to digital platforms from the traditional server-based models and having the ability to do task-based activities for our technicians is going to be a huge game changer. If you think about technician workloads, it's very task-based. They do this first, do this next, and what have you.

Having that availability of the task in real time in front of the cabinet when they're there means they don't need to flip through pieces of paper for expiration dates, recalls, or any of these things. That's going to be a huge advantage. Omnisphere, of course, is going to be tremendous for us to support that technology.

I think making it as user-friendly as possible is key. All of the automation is a tool for the operations. We design a lot of our operations around the automation, but when we can make that automation work in our workflows using these web-based programs, that's a huge advantage. Being able to upgrade or update real-time information when new software fixes come to market, and not having to wait until the end of the year, is a tremendous benefit overall. Very excited for that. Obviously, it will be some time before we can adopt it, but it should be huge.

Mark: I think it's great just to see, even from a staff perspective, that there's a partnership for Omnicell and that they're trying to improve analytics and other systems. Again, I think that's great. Anytime we can do any enhancement, it's really investing in our people and our patients.

Mehta: We do have a small team of folks that work on calls to provide feedback and say, “Hey, this is a future launch. We're creating this. What are your thoughts? What are we not thinking about? What do we need to change as we're creating things for the future?” To Laura's point, it truly is a partnership, and I think there's huge value in creating products that are beneficial for us and for the patients at the end of the day.

Mark: I do have to emphasize staff engagement. We do staff engagement scores on a regular basis, and I think that the automation and technology that we put into our systems has really helped. It's about having the tools that we need, and I think those investments have actually improved staff engagement feedback on our surveys because of everything we've invested in automation and the autonomous pharmacy.