Singapore hospitals are deploying robotic pharmacy technology to ease healthcare workforce shortages, cut patient wait times, and improve treatment outcomes, according to Becton Dickinson (BD).
Automating the Pharmacy Workflow
Across Southeast Asia, pharmacists are facing growing pressure from increasing patient loads and limited staffing. In a typical hospital setting, a pharmacist may spend 10 minutes retrieving medication and another three minutes verifying prescriptions, leaving patients waiting up to 20 minutes for service. The time squeeze often reduces pharmacist-patient consultations to under a minute.
To address this, BD has implemented an automated robotic arm system that prepares prescriptions with more than 99.9% accuracy. The solution reduces drug collection time to less than one minute, enabling pharmacists to focus on counseling patients.
“With our fully automated robotic arm technology, the robotic arm can pick up the drugs based on the prescription automatically and put the medicine in front of the pharmacist,” said Liang Lu, Vice President and General Manager for Southeast Asia at BD.
Efficiency and Mental Health Benefits
The benefits extend beyond workflow efficiency. Pharmacists often experience high stress levels from juggling long queues and the risk of dispensing errors. By automating repetitive tasks, the system reduces mental fatigue and allows staff to spend more time ensuring patients understand how to use their medications correctly, a factor critical to treatment success.
Improved job satisfaction and reduced error anxiety have also been reported after automation is deployed, supporting workforce well-being in a sector already strained by shortages.
Regional Healthcare Challenges
Southeast Asia faces a widening gap between healthcare demand and workforce capacity. Populations in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are aging rapidly, leading to higher prescription volumes and more complex treatment regimes. At the same time, recruiting and retaining healthcare workers remains a challenge, with pharmacists often stretched across multiple responsibilities.
Technology adoption is becoming a necessary strategy to close this gap. Automated solutions not only improve throughput in hospitals but also create more meaningful interactions between patients and healthcare professionals.
Future Adoption Outlook
Hospitals across Singapore are at the forefront of adopting robotic pharmacy systems, but demand is expected to expand regionally. Countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where healthcare infrastructure is under strain, are exploring automation as part of long-term modernization plans.
“Healthcare systems across the region are looking for ways to improve both efficiency and patient experience. Automation is not a replacement for pharmacists but an enabler for them to deliver better care,” Liang added.
As the region continues to invest in digital health and smart hospital technologies, robotic pharmacy systems are positioned to play a key role in improving accessibility, accuracy, and satisfaction in medication delivery.
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About the speaker:
Liang Lu
Vice President and General Manager for Southeast Asia
BD (Becton Dickinson)
Liang Lu, Vice President and General Manager for Southeast Asia at BD, brings over 15 years of leadership experience in healthcare, consulting, and private equity. Based in Singapore, he currently oversees BD’s operations across Southeast Asia and Pakistan, driving growth and regional strategy. Previously, Lu held senior roles in Shanghai, including Vice President of Pharmaceutical Systems and Director of Strategic Innovation. He began his career in management consulting with BCG and Bain Capital before moving into healthcare investments with CITIC Private Equity. Lu holds an MBA from The Wharton School and advanced degrees in microelectronics and engineering from China.
5W1H summary:
| Category | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who | 1. Liang Lu, BD Southeast Asia VP 2. Singapore pharmacists 3. Hospital patients |
| What | 1. Introduced robotic pharmacy automation 2. Reduced manual drug handling 3. Improved patient consultations |
| When | 1. Recently in Singapore hospitals 2. Amid workforce shortages 3. During rising patient demand |
| Where | 1. Singapore hospitals 2. Southeast Asia region 3. Hospital pharmacies |
| Why | 1. Address pharmacist burnout 2. Cut long waiting times 3. Improve treatment outcomes |
| How | 1. Robotic arm retrieves medicines 2. Ensures 99.9% accuracy 3. Frees time for patients |
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q1: What main challenge do pharmacists face today?
A1: Pharmacists spend long hours manually picking and checking prescriptions, leading to stress and rushed patient consultations.
Q2: How does the robotic arm technology work?
A2: The system automatically retrieves medicines based on prescriptions and presents them to pharmacists for quick verification.
Q3: What accuracy level does the solution provide?
A3: The robotic dispensing technology achieves more than 99.9% accuracy, reducing risks of medication errors.
Q4: How does automation benefit patients?
A4: Patients experience shorter waiting times and receive clearer guidance on medication use from pharmacists.
Q5: What additional benefits do pharmacists gain?
A5: Pharmacists report less mental stress, improved focus on patient care, and reduced fear of prescription errors.
Q6: Why is this technology important for healthcare?
A6: It helps address workforce shortages, streamlines workflows, and supports better treatment outcomes.
Transcript of the interview:
I spent most of my time with our customers in this region, understanding their pain points and seeing how we can leverage BD’s strengths to help them address their needs, particularly the health care workforce shortage and how to improve their workflow to increase efficiency.
I can give you an example of how I spent some time talking to our customers. Recently, one of them, being in Singapore, to help them improve the pharmacy workflow. If you imagine you are a pharmacist without an automatic solution, this is how you would typically spend your day. You come to the hospital, you pick up the prescriptions from the system and you go to your pharmacy shelf to pick up those prescriptions manually. You spend about 10 minutes collecting them, and you spend another two to three minutes to compare those drugs with the prescription to make sure they’re correct. You rush into a conversation with the patient just to tell them how to use the drugs. You maybe spend about a minute or even less, because you see there is another patient waiting anxiously. They have already spent 20 minutes waiting for you to attend to them. So, you rush into the conversation, send the patient away so that you can serve the next one. You do that throughout the whole day. Imagine how exhausting that is.
Now we are implementing a solution for our customers with our fully automated robotic arm technology, so the robotic arm can pick up the drugs based on the prescription automatically and put the medicine in front of the pharmacist. So they don’t have to run around and pick up the drugs manually. Now they spend less than a minute just to compare with the prescription, but they have peace of mind because our solution, the robotic technology, has more than a 99.9% accuracy rate.
They can focus more on talking to the patients for as long as it takes to make sure the patients know exactly how to use the medicine correctly to maximize the treatment outcome. There is an extra benefit to that: the pharmacist doesn’t have to undergo the mental stress of worrying that they got the medicine wrong and anxiously serving the patients who have been waiting too long, worrying that they might go and complain. So, improved mental health is an extra benefit we typically see after we implement this solution.