Pharmacy Automation for HIV Treatment: An Evaluation of Costs

In October 2012, an automated dispensing system (ADS) for dispensing antiretroviral medications (ARVs) was installed in the pharmacy in an outpatient HIV care and treatment site located in a public hospital in Johannesburg, South Africa. This site dispenses ARVs to almost 300 patients per day. The Health Economics and Epidemiology Research Office (HE2RO) evaluated the introduction of the ADS in this facility. In this policy brief, we report the estimated cost per script dispensed under manual and automated environments in stylised scenarios.