Soon in the government hospitals in TN, machines to dispense drugs
Posted on: 18/Dec/2018 10:10:44 AM
Don’t be surprised if you come across machines in the government medical college hospitals and in the health centres dispensing medicines to the patients. To reduce the waiting time and out of pocket expenditure, Tamil Nadu is having plans to launch ATM like vending machines that would dispense medicines to the patients suffering from chronic issues such as diabetes and hypertension etc.
Heath secretary, Dr. J. Radhakrishnan, spoke about how the unit works like a cash vending machine and how the medicine dispensing unit would be placed at many government medical college hospitals and health centres in the pilot phase. He added that these machines would have the capacity to read the bar coded prescriptions and would dispense medicines to the patients. He expressed his happiness regarding the machines ability to track the patients suffering from chronic illness. The health secretary explained how patients who need long therapy were asked to meet their doctors once in 3 months and how the hospitals gave drugs for 1 month and ask the patients to come back for supplies for the next 2 months. Then the patients meet the doctor the third time.
Some of the advantages of the medicine dispensing machines are these machines would help the government see through or tide over the staff crunch in the state pharmacies, ensure follow ups on patients, allow people belonging to other sections of society to avail free services at the government hospitals etc. In the state of Rajasthan similar machines were installed is known. The TN officials were highly impressed by the potential of these medicine dispensing machines. It is brought out that the machines would be able to detect repeat prescriptions and recommend doctor visits to the patients. This was confirmed by a state nodal officer for NCDs, Dr. Jerard Selvam.
The state of Tamil Nadu boasts the largest treatment programme in the world with the increasing incidences of non-communicable diseases and lakhs of people receive free drugs to keep sugar and BP levels under control. Dr Selvam later threw light on the out- of- pocket expenditure and said many people drop out of medications due to this being high.
