Panasonic Corporation has expanded a medical robot that dispenses drugs to patients. Panasonic medical robot will be ready for sale next March to Japanese hospitals and will market it in the United States and Europe later. The medical robot will cost several tens of millions of yen (hundreds of thousands of dollars).

“This robot is the first in our robotics project. It sorts out injection drugs to patients, saving time for pharmacists,” said Kadota. The robot does not look humanoid. “It looks like a cabinet with lots of small drawers,” he said.

Pharmacists put drugs into the robot, which stores medical data for patients. The robot will then sort out drugs for each patient and place them into respective drawers bearing the names of patients. [wptz]