Drug Vending Machines

An anonymous reader writes "If you guessed San Bernardino County prisons as the ideal place to put drug vending machines, come claim your prize. From the article, 'Corrections departments are responsible for so many burdensome tasks that many of their everyday functions, like administering prescription drugs to inmates, are afterthoughts for the public. However, dispensing medication was so laborious and wasteful for the San Bernardino County (Calif.) Sheriff-Coroner Department that officials sought a way to streamline the process. The end product was essentially a vending machine that links to correctional facility databases and dispenses prescription medications.'"

extra income for Corrections!

[MickyTheIdiot]

Ok.. I am only being SEMI snarky here after thinking about this...

They ought to make some extra revenue by selling the tech to Japan. While getting a doctor's Rx out of a central machine would probably tick off Americans, the Japanese would have no trouble with it at all... think of everything they buy through those machines already!

Instead of wasting their money on vending machines

[3waygeek]

Maybe the department could spring for some more coroners & staff. My brother lived in SB county until he passed away in May from an apparent heart attack. I say apparent because we still, 3 months later, don't have a death certificate, even though an autopsy was done and the body cremated within a few days of his death.

already being done in nursing homes

[trybywrench]

I work as a software engineer for a mid sized pharmacy chain. These things are pretty common wherever there's a large, consistent, patient population. Nursing homes use them as well as hospices, it's like an automated prescription filling robot where the rx is verified by a pharmacist at the very last step.

Most mail delivery pharmacies use them too, the concept is called "central fill" where pharmacies transmit rx's electronic to a central facility that has a few very high volume filling robots. The pharmacists there verify like 60 to 70 rx's per hour. You'd think pharmacists hate an assembly line job but they're actually the most sought after jobs. No sick, pissed off patients to deal with.

The most amazing part

[Mr 44]

The San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors approved $3.8 million for the project, which includes development, implementation and system costs. However, Fillman said the sheriff's department completed the task $500,000 under budget.

The last paragraph is the most notable part of the whole article, as far as I'm concerned!