Feb. 19, 2014

The medicinal powers of a Perkins Grant are acknowledged, at least in the metaphorical sense, by any academic program with the good fortune to have obtained one.

But it’s hardly a figure of speech in the case of the Amarillo College Pharmacy Technology Program, which recently obtained a Perkins Grant that really is about medicine and a powerful new system to ensure it is managed optimally.

AC acquired a Pyxis MedStation 4000 around the first of the year, a $37,000 automated medication storage and dispensing system just like the ones used in the hospitals and long-term facilities where AC health sciences graduates so often find employment.

“It’s an important and exciting addition,” Shawna Lopez, director of the Pharmacy Technology Program, said. “It’s important that our students gain experience on the same kind of technologies that are used in the healthcare facilities where they may go to work.

“Familiarity with the Pyxis MedStation will make them even more marketable when they graduate.”

The system includes a console (the brains) that communicates patient information to all the Pyxis med stations, a main dispensing station for medication storage and inventory control (including enhanced bar-code scanning technology), and software that improves the medication management processes—for pharmacy, nursing and other healthcare staff—so AC students of nursing and related disciplines can utilize it, too.

It has features to increase medication security and reduce dispensing errors. Bar-code technology ensures proper doses go the right patients, and inventory control is perpetuated by a built-in scanner.

Users of the system can log in through biometric ID (thumb-print scan).

“This is an investment that will not only vastly help our students, but will ultimately benefit the patients they serve,” Lopez said.