Background An annual meeting between the manufacturer of APOTECAchemo and all the users is held to share experience and discuss suggestions for best practise. The feedback collected during the meeting forms the basis for the next system upgrade aimed at increasing performance. Some improvements that we suggested were included in the 2012 upgrade and improved our productivity: a new procedure for reconstitutions; an extemporaneous picking list; faster communication between the management software and the robot; a more efficient vision system for identifying labels.

Purpose To quantify the benefits that pharmacists reaped in the day-to-day work in terms of productivity (number of preparations/day), after the annual upgrade.

Materials and Methods The performance of the APOTECAchemo equipment was analysed before and after the 2012 upgrade. The time required for cyclophosphamide, trastuzumab and gemcitabine reconstitution was also investigated.

Results An average of 45 doses per day was prepared before the upgrade, with a maximum of 60 preparations. After the installation, an average of 75 preparations per day was recorded, with a maximum of 100. The reconstitution of stable powder drugs (cyclophosphamide, trastuzumab and gemcitabine) during ‘spare time’ (weekends, early mornings, lunch times) allowed an average gain of 55 (11.5%), 72 (15%) and 24 (5%) minutes per day, respectively.

Conclusions The new upgrade allowed us to increase daily productivity by 66.6%. The continuing multidisciplinary dialogue among the stakeholders (physicians, pharmacists, technicians and engineers) enables us to make better use of APOTECAchemo in the daily clinical activity and encourages the technology to develop.

No conflict of interest.