Background Hospital Pharmacy Services work hard at logistics to supply medicinal products to inpatients. This prompted the need to modernise the technical resources and logistical processes with a semiautomatic carousel system (SCS) for storing and dispensing.

Purpose To describe the logistics processes performed by our semiautomatic vertical and horizontal carousel systems (SVCS, SHCS) of the Kardex type.

Materials and Methods Descriptive observational study in a tertiary level hospital (1493 beds). Quantitative variable: ‘medicines lines dispensing’, defined according to the Product Catalogue and Invoicing Update from the SEFH-TECNO group (Spanish Society of Hospital Pharmacy-Evaluation Group of New Technologies). Study period: January–June 2012. Data Source: Pharmacy Service Internal Register computer application and Mercurio application version 2.12. The type of logistic process performed for dispensing is classified according to the type of order: stock in clinical unit, preparation of unidoses and replacement drugs for the Pyxis. The workload was calculated for each type of carousel according to the storage volume of each system (SVCS = 15.6 m³, SHCS = 111.4 m³).

Results The total number of lines dispensed during the study period was 1264751: 1235662 were prepared with SCS (97.7%). Depending on the type of order, more work corresponded to the preparation of unidoses with 1128343 lines (91.31%), followed by 83092 to prepare stock lines in clinical units (6.72%) and 24227 order lines for stocking the Pyxis (1.96%). Preparation of the unidoses was fully developed in the SVCS, while preparation of replacement stock for Pyxis and stock in clinical units were carried out in the SHCS. Depending on the type of carousel, the SVCS workload was 396.32 lines/m³/day, compared with 5.27 lines/m³/day for SHCS.

Conclusions Identifying and quantifying the processes undertaken by the SCS is a very useful tool that allows us to adjust the workloads of the pharmacy technicians.

No conflict of interest.