How are hospital pharmacies more automated than regular pharmacies?

The next time you get medication from a hospital pharmacy, your pharmacist might be a robot. More hospital pharmacies are using "pick-and-place" robots to fill prescriptions and reduce errors. They fill prescriptions by reading bar codes, selecting the right pill or tablet from the right bin, and then bottling said pill or tablet in a container that's also bar-coded. (Bar codes are key in this process, we've noticed.)

Pharmacists then check the prescriptions before they hand them out to patients. The automation saves time — a robot can prepare 1,500 prescriptions in an hour while it would take three panting pharmacists three hours to hit that tally. You probably won't see a mechanical arm whipping tirelessly in your corner drugstore anytime soon, but you never know.