Automated Drug Dispensing System Reduces Medication Error

Running head: JOURNAL MANUSCRIPT ASSIGNMENT
AUTOMATED DRUG DISPENSING SYSTEM REDUCED THE RATE OF
MEDICATION ERROR
Abstract
Aim
The aim of this systematic review is to be identifying recent literature articles to
understand the beneficial effect of applying automated drug dispensing system in the
healthcare settings.
Design
The systematic review includes an integrative review process in which all the recent
literatures has been collected and a relevant review has been conducted to conduct a rigorous
analysis.
Intervention
Search strategy was conducted with collecting literatures from three databases and
then selecting 6 research articles so that a systematic analysis could be conducted and these
interventions could be used to establish the effectiveness of automated drug dispensing
system.
Main outcome
This review was able to cover all the aspects related to the application of drug
distribution system to reduce the rate of medication error in healthcare facilities. All the
findings indicated to the fact that cost effectiveness of the automated drug dispensing
machine, its ability to increase the quality of medication administration and cost effectiveness
are the primary aspects that makes the healthcare facilities to implement this system.
Conclusion
Inclusion of drug dispensing system effectively decreases the high cost of healthcare
facilities and in cost effective manner helps to provide the patients with effective and quality
healthcare interventions.
Key words
Automated drug dispensing system, medication error, effectiveness, patient safety,
efficiency.

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Systematic review
A detailed and integrative systematic review has been conducted by including recent
research articles for identifying the advantageous effects of implementing automated drug
dispensing machine in decreasing the rate of medication error.
Background
Advancement in modern information and technological means has increased the
efficiency and comprehensiveness of the healthcare procedures due to which, the rate of
manual errors has decreased to a significant level (Sng, Ong & Lai, 2019). It is an important
aspect to discuss as the World Health Organisation (2019), medication error is one of the
critical condition in the healthcare process of several developed and developing countries
around the world. These rates varies from 12% in United Kingdom, 42% in Sweden and 58%
in Mexico (World Health Organisation, 2019). This study also mentioned that within south
Asian countries, the rate varies from 15% to 88% where the primary reasons for medication
error are incorrect time and incorrect dissension or calculation of dose (World Health
Organisation, 2019). Besides this, lack of formal training of medication administration,
improper idea about risks, health concerns and extreme work pressure were also evolved as
leading reasons for increased medication error in healthcare facilities as the World Health
Organisation (2019). Therefore, in such condition, development and implementation of
automated drug dispensing machine would be an effective replacement for such processes so
that the rate off these errors could be controlled and effective care could be ensured. Further,
the implementation of this would ensure accurate calculation of dosage, accurate
identification of interventions for the health and wellbeing of the patients (Ahtiainen et al.,
2019).

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Aim
The primary aim of this systematic review would be identifying recent literature
articles and synthesize an appropriate literature review so that beneficial effect of applying
automated drug dispensing system in the healthcare settings could be understood.
Design
The systematic review would include an integrative review process in which all the
recent literatures would be collected and a relevant review would be conducted so that a
rigorous analysis could be conducted. In this process, starting from appropriate
methodologies to advanced studies with accurate research findings, an analysis of both
qualitative and quantitative research process would be conducted so that a complete and
comprehensive research study with all the identified research articles could be conducted.
Finally, with the identification of gaps of the studies, a cumulative strength and weakness of
the research process would be conducted.
Search strategy
As mentioned in the paper by Topp et al. (2015), systematic search strategy is the
process using which electronic databases are searched with selective keywords so that all the
research article relevant to the study could be collected and then used for the study purpose in
the process. In the search strategy conducted for this paper included electronic data bases
such as CINAHL, Pub Med, and Medline were searched with key terms such as “”automated
medication dispensing machine reduces the risk of medication error”, “application of drug
dispensing machine to reduce medication error”, “automated medicine distribution system
and the benefits of the patients”, “automated drug dispensing system and decreases rate of
medication error” and these key terms were combined and used in permutation combination
by using Boolean operators such as ‘AND’, ‘OR’, ‘NOT’ in all the search engines selected

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for the study. As the automated drug dispensing machine is developed and used in recent
times, the search time limit selected for this paper was 2012 to 2019 so that all the relevant
research papers could be collected. The inclusion criteria that were selected for the paper
were presences of English language, complete research article on the other hand, the
exclusion criteria of the paper would be language other than English and research articles that
are not accessible and hence, a relevant and appropriate research would be conducted.
Search outcome
The search outcome would include all the research journals that matches with the
inclusion criteria of the paper and then by applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria,
stating from the tile of the study to the abstract and research methodology, all important
aspects of the papers were assessed. The search flowchart that were used to select the
research articles in the paper is as follows:

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Medline
n=79
Pub Med
n=76
CINAHL
n=9659
228 42 58
110 21 19
91134
Number of studies that match with the inclusion criteria
Article that were included after title stage
Article that were included after abstract stage
Articles selected based on the basis of whole content
n= 6 Manual search
n= 2
Total number of studies after eliminating duplicates
(Search strategy flow diagram developed by the author)

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Quality appraisal
In this paper, the quality appraisal process was conducted with all the 6 research
articles included in the paper as Zeng et al. (2015) mentioned it as an important step for the
enhancement of the quality of the journal. The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme or CASP
tools were used to conduct the quality appraisal of the research articles with qualitative
research aspect, whereas for the quantitative research process, Center for Evidence-Based
Management critical appraisal tool were used so that all the positive and negative aspects of
these included research studies that could affect the findings of the paper could be mentioned.
Data abstraction and synthesis
In this journal manuscript paper, all the articles were tabulated and then from each of
these papers important definitions and key words, depending on which the entire paper
revolved were used. As per Liñán and Fayolle (2015), these helped to determine the thematic
analysis of the paper and with this, the iterative comparison between the papers were
conducted. Besides this, with thematic analysis it was a possible to accumulate the papers that
could be collectively used for one thematic analysis and hence relativity and accuracy of the
research study was ensured. In the appendix section of this paper, the tabular information of
each of the article has been included.
Findings
Overview of the studies included
All the six research articles that were included for the review in this paper were
evaluated depending upon their research methodology and research findings and the
summary of this quality appraisal has been provided in the appendix section of this paper. In
these papers, 3 papers followed the non-randomized control study, whereas 2 studies
followed the before and after observational study. The final paper that was included in the