[Deprecate9151]

I think for the pharmacists its simply economics. It's cheaper to have 3 or 4 pharmacists and a bunch of much lower payed techs on staff to do the work manually then develop and maintain automation while complying with existing regulations. I know some hospitals have automatic medication dispensing, so I'm assuming they have much higher volume where it makes sense.

[pavel_lishin]

Pharmacists can also catch obviously-wrong prescriptions - "This should be milligrams, not grams. If you take 20 grams of this, you'll die, in a spectacular and gruesome fashion."

(Granted, pharmacists can also miss things like this - which is why technology, checklists and humans working together are probably the best solution.)

[hn_throwaway_99]

I can't think of any situation where detection of things like wrong dosages, drug interactions, incorrect prescriptions, etc. couldn't be better tracked and identified by an automated system than a human.