The staff of Pharmacy Purchasing & Products magazine is excited to present our 7th annual State of Pharmacy Automation issue, packed with data and market research into past, present, and projected automation usage in US hospital pharmacies. Putting this into perspective, we are both humbled and proud that 88% of hospital pharmacy directors use PP&P when making automation purchasing decisions. 

The purpose of our annual State of Pharmacy Automation survey is to take stock of how hospital pharmacy practice has progressed over the course of the previous year in terms of adopting automation and implementing systems to increase efficiency and improve safety. Perhaps even more important, this is a time to review long-term trends and examine where pharmacy is headed as a profession, as more facilities look to automate manual tasks using such technology as drug carousels or high-volume unit dose packagers, with the overall aim of encouraging every staff member to work to the top of their license. The information found on the pages that follow gives you the opportunity to compare your own progress against your peers and, as we hear from many of our readers, this data often serves pharmacy well in justifying additional investments in pharmacy projects to management.

On another note, this issue represents an important milestone for Ridgewood Medical Media (RMM), publishers of PP&P. Beginning this past July, RMM embarked on a new venture to provide peer-to-peer, operational and experiential content for directors, managers, and administrators in health care-related medical laboratories. This new magazine—MedicalLab Management—seeks to offer the same level of informative and actionable content to hospital laboratory directors as PP&P offers to pharmacy directors.

As PP&P celebrates its eighth year, we are fortunate to have grown this magazine into one of the country’s premier information sources for the hospital pharmacy marketplace. With this in mind, please let your lab director know about MedicalLab Management, and that they are welcome to sign up for a free subscription at www.medlabmag.com/info.

Without question, the quality of our content is owed to the wonderful people we have the opportunity to work with. This includes the many fantastic authors and contributors to PP&P, as well as the exemplary staff at RMM. Our team, pictured here, work the many hours necessary to craft our editorial, locate the financial support, and manage the many details required of running a small business.  

From our staff to each and every one of you, we offer our thanks and continued respect for all that you do for our magazine, company, and each other to make PP&P the best magazine it can be. 

All the best,

R. Mitchell Halvorsen
Publisher

Select graphs from the State of Pharmacy Automation are available for your use as PowerPoint slides.
Click here to download