The impact of automation on the safety of drug dispensing in nursing homes.

Objective: To compare the frequency and seriousness of notified dispensing errors in nursing homes when medication is dispensed manually versus automatically using a specifically selected automatic dispensing system.

Method: A pre-post retrospective observational study in 7 nursing homes. We  compare voluntarily notified dispensing errors in a manually dispensed weekly  system on the one hand (year 2013), with an Automated Tablet Dispensing and  Packaging System Xana4001U2 Tosho® for oral solid drugs used in combination  with a manual system for other drug forms (year 2015), on the other.