A state-of-the-art robot helping to dispense medicines in the pharmacy at the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) has been given its own identity.

The new Vmax model robot is the centrepiece of the futuristic Outpatients Department pharmacy which opened at the Edgbaston hospital in July. As well as improved efficiency and speed, it also has increased storage capacity for dispensing prescriptions.

The robot now has its own name after University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) ran a competition and was inundated with dozens of entries from both staff and members of the public.

A short-list of suggestions was drawn up and the robot itself played a part in choosing the name Phred, which stands for Pharmacy Robot-Efficient Dispensing, from the final three.

Inderjit Singh, Associate Director of Commercial Pharmacy Services at the Trust, said: “It was a tough competition.

“We had a short-list but couldn’t decide, so we placed the final three names on boxes and put them inside the robot and asked it to randomly select one. Phred was the winning name.”

Phred was the brainchild of Lesley Devaney, Cancer Research Business Manager for the Trust, who wins an iPod for her idea.

She said: “I’m shocked – I’ve never won anything before. I haven’t got an iPod so this has made me really happy.”

Mr Singh said the robot was already giving a suggestion of developing its own personality.

“At night it tells the pharmacy assistant how much stock it has of each product and even does housekeeping by moving packets of medicine around. It’s just like it is tidying up.”

He added: “This sort of state-of-the-art technology is becoming more popular in pharmacy provision, both in hospitals and community pharmacies. It can dispense a variety of different medicines in seconds – at incredible speeds and without error. This really is a huge benefit to patients at UHB.”

Home for Phred is a compact storage space measuring just 1.6 metres wide, 8 metres long and 3 metres high, capable of storing 16,000 products.

 To store medication, the barcode is scanned and the pack measured. Phred then decides where best to stack the packets based on the size of the product and the frequency of use.

UHB has created a subsidiary company, Pharmacy@QEHB Ltd, to run the outpatients pharmacy – a UK first.