Donnegan Systems: Pharmacy Storage Solutions

A vital area in any healthcare facility is the pharmacy.  It is essential that this department be well stocked at all times to promptly fill any medication requirements.  This department contains multi-sized items from packets and cases of pills, various size bottles and containers to intravenous supplies and prescription forms…all demanding a storage system with flexibility.  The trend toward unit dose packaging requires even greater shelf space.  In addition to the standard pharmaceuticals required, new medications are continually being ordered as they appear on the market, therefore, space must be allocated for the storage of these items.

The activity level in this area is extremely high.  Nurses fill their supply carts with daily patient medications.  Orders are placed every day to re-stock the supplies while new supply deliveries arrive three to four times a day.  Consequently, the staff needs total accessibility and ease of retrieval with this ongoing inventory. Montels Pharmastack storage system, featuring up-front-end shelf units, is perfect for storing "fast movers" in this fast-paced environment, keeping active stock up front and within easy reach. 

Documentation Storage for Pharmaceuticals

When Lilly Research Laboratories needed to relocate its Regulatory Filing Room, records managers had two objectives in mind-increasing storage capacity and improving the accessibility of information.

Eli Lilly and Company has evolved from a regional pharmaceutical distributor to an international company with products available in 120 countries. Today, Lilly's research is aimed at identifying breakthrough drugs and bringing them to market as quickly as possible. The regulatory paperwork associated with that research is often staggering and requires sophisticated file storage and retrieval operations.

The records storage and retrieval operation at Lilly Research Laboratories is responsible for maintaining files for initial new drug applications, INDs, and new drug applications, NDAs. There are thousands of individual files stored in the Regulatory Filing Room. Each day, eight to 10 people who need to access specific information contained in the files visit the area.

Formerly, all of the records were stored on eight-foot high mobile shelves. The need for additional filing space necessitated moving the Regulatory Filing Room to a new location. The area selected is about 1,800 square feet.

"We saw the additional overhead space as an opportunity to achieve maximum utilization of the area and we wanted to take advantage of it," said Roberta Smithey, Associate Regulatory Consultant at Eli Lilly.

To take advantage of the overhead space, the company replaced a portion of its mobile shelving with 12 MegaStar MediaStation Electric Lateral Files. These 11-foot high units reduced by half the amount of space required to store the same number of files as the mobile shelves, some 10,000-12,000 files, or about 20,000-24,000 linear file inches.

With the mobile shelf filing system, there were approximately 40 filing actions per hour requiring 28 person-hours to perform. The company estimates that by using the MediaStation Electric Lateral File System, up to 90-file actions per hour can be performed.

The Electric Lateral File System is ergonomically designed to present files at an ideal height for selection, 39 inches for standing operation. This height contributes to employee safety and improved productivity when compared with bending and climbing associated with conventional shelving.

A special feature of the Electric Lateral File System at Eli Lilly is the file management software system used to retrieve file folders. To access a specific file, the operator simply queries the software with one or more of these identifiers. When the file is located, the computer shows the entry on the screen to allow the operator to confirm accuracy. Average cycle time is seven seconds.

The installed MediaStation Electric Lateral Files have the capacity for approximately 3,000 more files for a total of about 30,000 linear file inches.

"That additional capacity will figure into Phase Three of our program when we merge the IND and NDA files with files from another regulatory operation here at the company so that we have a complete, company-wide regulatory document control system," Smithey said.