The Design and Development of An Automatic Tablet Counting Machine for the Reduction of Counting-Time Workload Among Pharmaceutical Staff in a Community Hospital, Kanchanaburi Province

Abstract

The manual process of tablet counting in community hospitals is time-consuming, impacting the efficiency of pharmaceutical staff and prolonging patient waiting times. This study aimed to design and develop an automatic tablet-counting machine to reduce the Medicine Counting-time Workload associated with manual tablet counting among pharmaceutical staff in a community hospital. A quasi-experimental design was employed, with data collection conducted between June and July 2024. The study utilized a one-group pretest-posttest approach to compare tablet counting times and assess pharmaceutical staff satisfaction. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis, and the Mann-Whitney U Test was applied to compare the counting time for 10 types of medication. The results demonstrated that the automatic tablet counting machine reduced Medicine Counting-time Workload, cutting tablet counting time by an average of approximately 50% compared to manual counting, significantly lowering the workload of pharmaceutical staff (p < 0.001) across all medication types. Additionally, the four participating pharmaceutical staff members reported high levels of satisfaction, particularly in terms of benefits received, system compatibility, and overall effectiveness of the machine. The average satisfaction score was 35.50 out of 36, with a standard deviation of ±0.58, indicating a positive response to the developed system.