Medical Robot Panasonic Dispenses Drugs
The Japanese have been working feverishly on developing robots which can aid in the medical care of their growing elderly population.
Their latest focus on medical robots is in the dispensing of drugs field, where Panasonic is near to releasing their version.
Projections are it could begin operations in Japanese hospitals as early as March 2010, and then proceed to the European and North American markets after that.
Panasonic estimates they could generate about $315 million in revenue by 2016 with the drug dispensing robot.
How it works it the robot will be linked to medical records and will run around the hospitals obtaining the needed prescriptions.
Research reports estimate the robot will be able to do the job in half the four hours it now takes trained pharmacists to do it.
Panasonic isn't the first company to turn to robots as a means for dispensing drugs, but it looks like it's set to become one of the bigger players in the still fledgling field, with it announcing today that it's developing a robot that it hopes will rake it about 30 billion yen (or $315 million) by 2016.
Panasonic isn't quite ready to actually show off the robot just yet, but it says it could be making the rounds at some Japanese hospitals as early as March, and head into the United States and Europe sometime after that. It's also not ready to do much communicating about specifics, with it only going so far as to say that it "does not look humanoid" but rather looks like "a cabinet with lots of small drawers" (no doubt somewhat like the Pyxis bot pictured above), and that it'll be able to store medical data for each patient and sort out prescriptions for up to 400 patients in about two hours. That cabinet won't come cheap though, with Panasonic estimating that it'll cost "several tens of millions of yen," or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Japanese giant Panasonic has created a robot that will dole out drugs to patients and that's set to happen very soon.
According to an exclusive story on nikkei.net, the robot will help pharmacists complete prescriptions. The robot will be available in just a few months time.
The robots will be sold in Europe and the USA too, and Panasonic apparently has plans to develop other medical robots that will help the elderly and ailing move around.
Medical Robot Panasonic Dispenses Drugs
