Practical Usefulness of Compounding Robot (ChemoRo™) for Pharmacists Engaging in Anticancer Drug Preparation

摘要

Although compounding robots can support pharmacists in anticancer drug preparation, the usefulness of such robots in the daily work of pharmacists remains unclear. At Nagoya City University Hospital, we have used the CytoCare® Chemotherapy Compounding Robot (Health Robotics) since 2012 and switched to ChemoRo™ (Yuyama Manufacturing Co.) in 2021. Here, we aimed to evaluate the practical usefulness of ChemoRo for pharmacists preparing anticancer drugs. The number of drug preparations in a 6-month period handled by CytoCare or ChemoRo was retrospectively investigated. Additionally, the time required if all preparations are made manually by pharmacists (assumptive time, previously defined to be 9.4 minutes per preparation) and the actual overall time required by manual and robotic procedures to prepare anticancer drugs were determined. Moreover, the ability of the robots to reduce the drug preparation time was analyzed by comparing the assumptive and overall times. CytoCare and ChemoRo handled 26.8％ (3,123/11,664) and 46.2％ (5,879/12,737) of all drug preparations, respectively, and the actual overall time was significantly shorter than the assumptive time in each investigation period (P < 0.001). Notably, the actual overall time required was significantly reduced when using ChemoRo as compared to using CytoCare (6.35 h/day and 3.45 h/day, respectively; P < 0.001). These findings demonstrate that robots can significantly reduce the time pharmacists spend on drug preparation and enhance the daily efficiency of pharmacies. Moreover, ChemoRo is superior to CytoCare in terms of time-saving potential. Thus, ChemoRo is a better option to achieve enhanced healthcare support for patients and medical staff.