The two most common reasons licensed pharmacy staff face legal action is dispensing the wrong dose and the wrong medication, and the average paid out claim is nearly $125,000. However, researchers are working on artificial intelligence-powered models to prevent these pharmacy errors from occurring, according to a new study in npj Digital Medicine.
Researchers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor studied whether AI could supplement pharmacists' expertise in spotting pharmacy errors by performing automated checks to verify pills' shape, color, and unique, 10-digit National Drug Code.
The study, published July 27, analyzed 65,274 images of 345 different medications in bottles from an unnamed mail-order pharmacy. The research team designed a model to identify each medication's National Drug Code, which accurately predicted which drug it was presented with about 98.5 percent of the time.