Risk reduction in a cancer chemotherapy production unit: Contribution of an automated drug dispensing system

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of our study was to evaluate the contribution of an automated drug dispensing system in securing cancer chemotherapy production process at the pharmacy of the National Institute of Oncology in Rabat. METHODS: The failure modes and effects analysis method was applied to the chemotherapy production process in two phases: Phase 1, using an open shelf for storage then phase 2, using an automated drug dispensing system. The failure modes were defined and their criticality indexes was calculated on the basis of the likelihood of occurrence, the potential severity for the patients and/or the impact on the process and the detection probability. The criticality indexes of the two phases were prioritized and compared. RESULTS: We identified 35 failure modes for phase 1 and 37 for phase 2. The sum of criticality indexes was 5957 and 4586, respectively, for phase 1 and phase 2, corresponding to a criticality reduction of -23%. The greatest improvements concerned that the needed drug is missing during the picking, storage of potential expired drugs, and double compounding. CONCLUSION: Our study highlighted the contribution of automated drug dispensing system in risk minimization. The use of automated drug dispensing system is a part of security improvement in chemotherapy production unit.