Outpatient Pharmacy Pharmacists
Outpatients
At National Cheng Kung University Hospital, outpatient pharmacy services are designed to provide medication care for mild illnesses and stable chronic diseases. These services encompass drug management, prescription issuance, prescription review, medication dispensing, medication verification, and medication delivery and counseling. Since 2020, the outpatient pharmacy has gradually integrated human factors engineering with various automated systems, including medication conveyor systems, electronic gates, and precision weighing systems. These technologies have significantly reduced pharmacists' dispensing time and improved dispensing accuracy.
By incorporating information and communication technology (ICT) into a comprehensive barcode system, this system ensures that all dispensing steps are traceable, enabling a closed-loop dispensing process, as well as leaving detailed records of every step. Through this system, medication usage can be interlinked with individual patients, allowing real-time traceability of controlled drugs, blood products, vaccines, and other high-risk medications, ultimately enhancing patient safety. National Cheng Kung University Hospital has since established an intelligent and automated dispensing system to provide a comprehensive solution for dispensing operations, becoming the first outpatient pharmacy in Taiwan to incorporate human factors engineering into operations design.
Taiwan’s First Advanced Automated Dispensing Pharmacy:
The outpatient pharmacy is the first in Taiwan to fully implement advanced automated dispensing systems, including boxed medication dispensing machines, PTP sheet medication dispensing machines, automated medication storage systems, intelligent refrigeration medication management cabinets, and voice-guided smart dispensing cabinets. Through collaboration between pharmacists and information engineers, automated systems and medical information systems have been integrated to create a fully automated dispensing ecosystem. This system supports automated medication dispensing, precise dispensing, dispensing error detection, and real-time monitoring.
2025 Total dispensing items: 6,114,977
2025 Total prescriptions dispensed: 1,340,809
2025 Average medication dispensing time: 8.28 minutes
2025 Average patient waiting time: 4.49 minutes
2025 Average dispensing error rate: 3.3 ppm
2025 Average near-miss rate: 147.8 ppm
2025 Average pharmacist intervention rate: 106.0 ppm
2025 Patient complaint letters received: 11 cases
2025 Patient commendation letters received: 2 cases
A leading automated pharmacy operator in Taiwan, attracting over 50 benchmarking and study visits from healthcare institutions in Taiwan and abroad between 2020 and 2025, and receiving coverage in news media interviews and reports more than five times.
