Cost-effectiveness of two technology-assisted manual medication picking systems versus traditional manual picking in a hospital outpatient pharmacy.

Objective: To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of two technology assisted manual medication picking systems vs traditional manual picking.

Methods: This was a retrospective observational study comparing three outpatient pharmacies of a tertiary referral hospital in Singapore, where a light-emitting diode (LED-guided) manual picking system, an LED-guided manual picking plus lockable drawer (LED-LD) system, and traditional manual picking were implemented, respectively. The primary outcome measure was the incidence of medication near-misses over the observation period.