Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital Reduces Storage Footprint by 50% with Vertical Carousels
Challenge
Moses H. Cone Hospital’s pharmaceutical network operates at a warehouse capacity that fulfills orders for its own facility as well as for sister facilities and clinics within its system. Previously, their inventory was stored on static shelves in cardboard bins, and technicians would manually pick items to fill a 24-hour cart supply once a day.
This process would take technicians around 4 hours to complete just one day’s worth of order fulfilment. Manual picking also increased the chance of picking errors due to its reliance on technicians to always pick correctly. The hospital and its staff were in search of a solution that would centralize and streamline their inventory for accuracy and efficiency.
Solution
Within their inpatient facility, Moses H. Cone Hospital integrated a vertical carousel system to seamlessly interface with their electronic medical record system and the clinics of their sister facilities. Additionally, the hospital customized their vertical carousels with refrigeration and doors to ensure that refrigerated medications remain cold.
With a door on the inside and outside of the clean-room, each door is programed to only open if the other side is closed. The carousel is also HEPA filtered to meet compliance regulations.
Technicians within the clean-room can gain visibility of the inventory in the carousel through their console. Once they select an item, the carousel will then close the door on the outside and open the door on the inside, rotating the carousel to deliver the selected product at an ergonomic height.
