04 August 2025 | Expert Insight
In an exclusive interview with Robotics Business News, Julian Vogelsanger, Product Manager at Swisslog Healthcare, discusses the development and impact of PillPick Octave, the company’s most advanced automated medication management system to date. Designed to simplify workflows, reduce manual intervention, and enhance medication safety, PillPick Octave brings together intelligent software, eco-friendly packaging, and high-capacity storage in one seamless solution. Vogelsanger explains how customer-driven innovation has shaped this system to meet the evolving needs of large hospital pharmacies and centralized service centers, while laying the groundwork for future integration of AI and IoT capabilities.
What was the primary goal behind developing PillPick Octave, and how does it enhance medication safety compared to previous generations?
The primary objective of developing PillPick Octave was to enhance the overall user experience. This was accomplished by introducing more streamlined & initiative workflows, along with significant improvements in software usability and operational ergonomics. The improved software UI/UX and enhanced medication preparation process make the system more accessible, efficient, and user-friendly for pharmacy staff. Medication safety has further been enhanced through the continued advancement in the PickView Vision System and its more robust and guided software interface, which minimizes human-error and ensures consistent quality in medication packaging.
With the system now integrating packaging, storage, and dispensing in a single workflow, how does this end-to-end automation impact pharmacy throughput and manpower?
PillPick has long delivered versatile packaging with high-density storage and effortless patient-specific dispensing. Now, PillPick Octave has been scaled up with significant improvements that enable faster task execution and reduce the need for manual intervention, allowing pharmacy staff to focus more of their time on high-value or patient-centric activities.
PillPick Octave reduces plastic packaging by 44% and improves medication-damage detection—what drove these eco-friendly and safety-focused enhancements?
Customer feedback played the most important role in the decision to implement more eco-friendly enhancements. In this feedback, sustainability and medication safety were consistently mentioned as top priorities. Directly addressing these environmental concerns, the new packaging module, “EcoPack,” enables the production of unit-dose pouches for bulk-medication, using 44% less packaging material while still delivering high-quality & protective packaging. While the improvements to PickView in visual inspection and damage detection reflect our commitment to medication integrity and patient safety.
The upgraded BoxStation Plus provides 80% faster RFID reads and an improved UI—how do these usability improvements translate to frontline efficiency?
Improvements to BoxStation Plus such as faster RFID reads and redesigned user interface streamlines the preparation and loading process. These enhancements reduce processing time, simplify workflows and enable staff to complete tasks quicker and with greater confidence.
Can you explain how the PickView™ Vision System archives images for each unit-dose package, and how pharmacies use those records for audits or error resolution?
The PickView™ Vision System captures and archives an image of every unit-dose package on the system server. These images can be searched and retrieved at any time by their unique code through the software’s user interface. This allows pharmacy staff to quickly access visual records for audits, quality assurance, or error resolution. This feature enhances traceability and reduces the need for manual verification, supporting a more automated and reliable medication packaging process.
With a storage capacity of over 50,000 unit doses, what types of healthcare settings—hospital pharmacies or consolidated service centers—stand to benefit most?
PillPick Octave seamlessly integrates packaging, storage, and dispensing into a single, unified system making it ideal for large hospital pharmacies and consolidated service centers. These environments benefit greatly from high-capacity storage, patient-specific medication management systems like PillPick Octave, especially when scalability, traceability, and advanced automation are high priorities for daily operations.
How is Swisslog Healthcare supporting integrations between PillPick Octave and existing hospital systems like barcode scanning, pneumatic tubes, and EMR?
PillPick Octave supports seamless integration with hospital infrastructure through standard interfaces with barcode scanning systems and electronic medical records (EMRs), enabling efficient data exchange and traceability. Swisslog Healthcare offers solutions to enable connectivity and support traceability of deliveries via pneumatic tube systems.
Looking ahead, what innovations—like AI-driven analytics, IoT connectivity, or advanced packaging formats—are planned for future PillPick iterations?
Future product developments will explore AI-supported tools (e.g. for analytics and visual inspection), as well as deeper IoT connectivity for system monitoring. Evolving packaging solutions, in both format and material composition, will remain another focus on development efforts, aiming to further reduce environmental impact while maintaining medication integrity. These innovations aim to push the boundaries of automation, safety, and sustainability in hospital pharmacy operations.
