Ural Federal University: “Smart” Medication Dispensing System Developed at University

Specialists of Ural Federal University are developing a digital system of drug provision. The new approach will help simplify and speed up the procedure for obtaining medications. For the first time in the Sverdlovsk Region, the system will be launched on the basis of the regional oncological dispensary, TASS reports.

The project is being developed under the auspices of the Ural Federal University’s innovation infrastructure and was awarded third place in the Minute of Technological Glory competition organized by UrFU and the Ministry of Education and Youth Policy of the Sverdlovsk Region.

Project leader Alisa Karimova, a postgraduate student at the UrFU Department of Innovation and Intellectual Property, notes that the system will help simplify life not only for patients who need drugs, but also for healthcare professionals who purchase drugs.

“Sometimes a patient has to go through six or seven instances on his way to a free medication. This leads to a number of problems not only for patients, but also for employees of the Ministry of Health, because they have to make daily decisions about what drugs and how much should be purchased, and in parallel, manually open quotas for the prescription of drugs. We propose to create a single drug window with transparent, automated analytics for each patient and support for functional services for all participants in the process. The process of obtaining drugs should become simple and transparent”, said Alisa Karimova.

The technology will be implemented using data-mining and a self-learning neural network, and QR codes will be involved in dispensing the drugs. The patient will only have to sign in, for example at the public services portal, choose the date, time and place of getting the medication. The data will be automatically sent to the pharmacy.