The Research On Automatic Dispensing System Of Traditional Chinese Medicine

In recent years, automated pharmacy in the country has gained rapid development, itsdegree of automation become more and more high, and the technology gap between China andforeign countries is also getting smaller and smaller. But the automatic dispensing systemsuitable for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is still not achieves greater development. Atpresent, the automated dispensing system of medicine in Chinese medicine pharmacy onlydispenses TCM Formula Particles and Chinese Herbal Pieces. Both types of TCM can bequantitatively packaged and can be made into a small package of different specification medicine.They are easy to be dispensed automatically. But Chinese Medicine pays attention to syndromedifferentiation and treatment. Only several specifications small package Chinese medicine isdifficult to meet the dispensation. In addition, the efficacy of TCM Formula Particles which isequivalent to the decoction of Chinese medicine in the Chinese medicine sector is also disputed.Therefore, in order to promote the automation and modernization of TCM pharmacy, improvework efficiency in the TCM pharmacy, and protect the patient’s medication safety, developing anautomatic dispensing system of TCM has great academic value.This topic innovatively uses industrial electromagnetic vibratory feeder for transportingmaterials for dispensation of Chinese herbal medicine, and proposes a set of design on AutomaticDispensing System of TCM. The system covers the main workflow of Chinese medicinepharmacy which contains outpatient prescription, checking prescription, prescription dispensing,pharmacists’ audit, and completing prescription. It mainly consists of Control system, feedingsystem, weighing systems delivery system and so on. Feeding system deliver the pretreatedgranular medicine to the weighing system by electromagnetic vibratory feeder. Weighing systemconvert the weight information into electrical signal by weighing sensor, thus the weightinformation is fed back to the control system. Control system is composed of the host computer(PC) and PLC, which Controls multiple devices throughout the system and makes these devicescoordinated and efficient operation. By running on the host computer control systemsmanagement program developed by Visual Basic, PC can communicate with the PLC by serialports, and send control information to the PLC. Then PLC processes the received information.After processing is complete, PLC sends control commands to the working devices and receivesfeedback from the sensor. The role of the delivery system is to deliver the medicine bucket to thedischarge ports of the quantitative weighing equipment. Then the medicine bucket receives the deployment of TCM. In addition, the system is also equipped with Chinese medicine grinder,automatic packaging machines, automatic labeling machines and other auxiliary equipment.Chinese medicine grinder can put medicinal material into a granular form for deployment ofdrug mechanism. Automatic packaging machine can wrap the TCM that is dispensed up.Automatic labeling machine sticks the label which records the details of the drugs in the drugpacking bags.The Automatic Dispensing System of TCM that is studied in this paper can enhance thework efficiency of the TCM pharmacy; can improve the accuracy of the dispensation of TCMpharmacy; and can reduce the workload of pharmacy staff. The system also can be used inChinese medicine shop. It has better prospects.