PillStream: Agile High-Throughput Assembly of Custom Multi-Medication Packaging

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Errors in the administration of medications to residents of long term care facilities LTCFs threaten resident safety and add significant unnecessary costs to the healthcare system Use of unit dose medications that require LTCF staff to manually sort and assemble specific patient medications times per day can result in error rates as high as with of total errors having significant potential for harm Just preparing medications for administration consumes an estimated person hours day in a typical resident LTCF or an estimated full time equivalents in all US LTCFs reducing staff time available for other functions Another unnecessary cost estimated at $ billion in US nursing homes alone arises from medications that are wasted due to prescription changes and patient turnover New regulations from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services effective January target reduced medication waste by requiring andquot short cycleandquot fills d days instead of the traditional day andquot bingo cardsandquot However even if this has the desired result of reducing prescription drug waste industry sources predict that use of shorter cycle bingo cards may increase LTCF staff time and possibly errors associated with additional manual sorting of more unit dose packages Proposed Solution Artaicandapos s novel PillStreamTM system incorporates proven advanced agile manufacturing technology utilized in our successful TileJet robot developed for high speed low cost mosaic just in time manufacturing PillStream is designed for high accuracy high throughput production of Custom Multi medication Packages CMPTM that will enable Central Fill pharmacies to provide their LTCF customers with short cycle dispensing at reduced cost and with closed loop capability enabling return of unused medications In SBIR Phase I we created a PillStream prototype that exceeded our primary success criterion of e placement accuracy for surrogate pills and gelatin capsules while exceeding our target fill rate blisters min by Specific Aims In this month Phase II SBIR we propose to build and test a larger fully functional Pill Stream prototype able to dispense up to andquot fast moverandquot pills capsules directly from wholesale medication bottles modify the onboard PS software to enable integration with pharmacy management software and beta test the PS in up to Central Fill pharmacies using it to fill daily patient specifc CMPs containing andquot fast moverandquot medications in order to compare accuracy and cost to existing methods Success in meeting our target SBIR Phase II engineering specifications for accuracy e and throughput e blisters min and e daily CMPs minute in a real Central Fill pharmacy setting should enable Artaic to raise Phase III funds for commercial production of PS and larger PS and PS units PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Errors in the administration of medications to residents of long term care facilities LTCFs threaten resident safety and add significant unnecessary costs to the healthcare system Artaic is developing a novel Pill StreamTM system PS that incorporates proven advanced agile manufacturing technology to provide high accuracy high throughput production of Custom Multi medication Packages CMPTM that will enable Central Fill pharmacies to provide their LTCF customers with patient specific daily pills at reduced cost and with closed loop capability enabling return of unused medications This grant application requests funds to complete the development of the PS the first commercial scale PillStream model and to test it on the assembly floor of up to two Central Fill pharmacies