The Basque Government has launched an ambitious project to improve the distribution of medicines to residences by centralizing them in a service that assumes all the necessary processing to guarantee “safety, quality and efficiency”. Farmabide, Euskadi’s Social Pharmacy, is already operational and is capable of distributing medicines, “in an absolutely personalized way and separated in their daily intakes” to more than 13,700 users of 140 Basque care centers, 73 of which are located in Bizkaia.
The new pharmaceutical service center is located in the Erletxe industrial estate in Galdakao, occupies 1,038 square meters and has required an investment of three million euros by the autonomous Executive. Once its filming phase had been completed and it was fully operational, this Monday afternoon it was visited by the Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu, accompanied by the Minister of Health, Gotzone Sagardui, the deputy for Social Action in Bizkaia, Sergio Murillo and their counterparts in Álava and Gipuzkoa.
Urkullu has shown his satisfaction with the new facilities by emphasizing that they represent “a milestone, a before and after in the pharmaceutical provision of residences in the Basque Country”. Farmabide has been joined by 22 pharmaceutical professionals from Osakidetza, who have spent months organizing the entire system in close collaboration with the medical staff of each center. Once the medical prescription for each patient has been made, it is sent to the new center in electronic prescription format.
The pharmaceutical center receives all the weekly medicine needs of all the users of the residences. With this order, a centralized purchase is made, which is stored in the center by means of a system of “robots”, modern machines that are responsible for storing the boxes according to the products and controlling at all times “their traceability, both the origin and its expiration.
From these warehouses, the pills are removed one by one from their containers by another modern equipment and from there they are sent to another robot, which is in charge of the distribution based on the individualized intakes that each user of a residence requires and that They are also placed in personalized bags. To ensure that the entire process is carried out safely, a final robot is responsible for reviewing it. As soon as an incorrect or defective medication is detected, it is withdrawn for repair or replacement.
Those responsible for Farmabide have explained that the supply has already begun to the first Biscayan residence, “Arratiako Egoitza de Dima”. This month the expansion will continue to the Ama Xantalen residence in Irún, and to the San Roke de Llodio residence in Alava. “The rest of the centers, which are already adapting their own drug deposits to the new system, will be incorporated progressively,” added the same sources.
Urkullu stressed that this new pharmaceutical distribution center will guarantee “comprehensive, coordinated, quality medical-pharmaceutical care with a high level of safety”. In this sense, he has recalled the importance of proper care for the users of the residences, since 70% of them require several daily medications “and a third have prescribed more than 10”.
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