The Hospital Authority has said its smart warehouse management system which uses automated robots has successfully streamlined the handling of medicine, freeing up pharmacists to focus on patient care.

The system was implemented in late 2024 at the North District Community Health Centre, where robots carry designated drug shelves to workstations at the centre's warehouse to replenish drugs.

This means pharmacists no longer need to search for and transport drugs.

The authority's chief pharmacist William Chui pointed out that the time required for retrieving medicine has decreased from 20 minutes to only a few minutes.

"If the pharmacists engage in the storage of the drugs, or other [logistical] or technical operations, they would spend less time on patients directly, so that's why we introduced this smart warehouse management system," Chui said.

"It can provide more time for pharmacists, healthcare professionals or dispensers to take care of our patients.

"The second benefit of introducing this new smart system is to ensure or enhance the medication system, and also for increasing the storage space by 20 percent," he added.

Betty Leung, the pharmacy department manager at the North District Hospital – which also uses some of the medicine from the North District Community Health Centre – explained that the system has eliminated the need to reserve space for trolleys used for carrying medicine, increasing storage capacity.

She also pointed out that there is a backup plan if the system fails.

"We can call for a 24-hour support, and worse comes to worst, we can revert to our old mechanism of having staff going into the drug store to get the drugs."

She added that the system also monitors the medicine inventory in real time, which would ensure no drugs would be used past their expiry date.

Leung also said there are plans to expand the use of the smart warehouse management system.

"In [health facilities that will be redeveloped], or new hospitals, new clinics, we can deploy this warehouse system to enhance the service."


Edited by Aaron Tam