Middle East and Africa Pharmacy Automation Market – Industry Trends and Forecast to 2030

Middle East and Africa Pharmacy Automation Market Analysis and Insights

The rising incidence of accidents and deaths due to medical drug errors puts tremendous pressure on the general healthcare sector. Both healthcare professionals and pharmacists are searching for more effective and accurate solutions to avoid such frequent medical malfunctions. In addition, with the increasing number of patients, visitors, and their respective safety needs, the drug delivery system becomes more complicated each passing day. In order to tackle this serious issue, advanced technologies such as pharmacy automation systems are now emerging as the most powerful tools. The goal of these instruments is to reduce medical prescription errors and maximize patient safety. Therefore, implementing such pharmacy automation systems helps healthcare service providers and pharmacists minimize their losses and improve quality and productivity.

In addition, the implementation of technological innovations and the advancement of automated systems with improved pharmacy automation systems lead to higher success rates and new applications of devices with higher demand for innovative products for prescription medicines for compounding, dispensing, storing, and labeling are driving the market growth over the forecast period. However, it is anticipated that factors such as reluctance in implementing pharmacy automation systems due to their high cost would restrict their adoption, which is expected to restrain the market growth.

The Middle East and Africa pharmacy automation market is supportive and aims to reduce medication dispensing errors and improve patient safety. Data Bridge Market Research analyzes that the Middle East and Africa pharmacy automation market will grow at a CAGR of 7.7% during the forecast period of 2023 to 2030.

Market Definition

Pharmacy automation plays a significant role in modern healthcare as it allows medicine to be conveniently delivered and distributed in the hospital pharmacy or retail pharmacy. Automation of the pharmacy helps to reduce the error in the medication. It prevents errors such as missing medication information, missing patient information, dispensing formulations, prescription errors, tracking therapy, and others that can occur during the manual process. One of the most common types of errors is incorrect labeling information and instructions. To improve healthcare facilities and services and to ensure patient safety, it is vital to reduce prescription error, which is why the pharmacy automation system is used in quite important ways to eliminate storage, inventory, usage, and retrieval error. The use of pharmacy automation is highly acceptable and beneficial in increasing the efficiency and accuracy of pharmacies. Furthermore, the need for preventing medication errors and the rising geriatric population across the globe are likely to boost the market growth in the forecast period.

Middle East and Africa Pharmacy Automation Market Dynamics

This section deals with understanding the market drivers, advantages, opportunities, restraints, and challenges. All of this is discussed in detail below:

DRIVERS

• Growing Need to Minimize Medication Errors

Medical errors are the leading cause of death in countries, further leading to increased hospitalization worldwide. Medication errors are of various types that include errors in the chain of pharmacological and pharmaceutical patient care: prescription errors, dispensing errors, administration errors, transcription errors, prescribing faults, and ‘across settings’ errors.

A medication mistake can occur due to a number of variables, such as inadequate order coordination between the doctor and pharmacist, improper storage practices in pharmacies, and misunderstandings arising from the use of identical labels.

Dispensing errors include any anomalies or deviations from the prescribing order, such as dispensing the wrong dose, drug, dosage type, incorrect amount, or insufficient, incorrect, or inadequate labeling. The misleading or insufficient instruction for use, improper planning, packaging, or storage of medication before dispensing is also considered a medication error.

In a pharmacy that fills 250 prescriptions per day, errors occur at a rate of 4 per day, amounting to an estimated 51.5 million errors out of 3 billion prescriptions filled annually across the nation.

• Rising Demand for Pharmaceuticals

The escalating demand for pharmaceuticals is observed across the globe due to the surging incidence of chronic diseases such as cancers, diabetes, obesity, and asthma among others. The people suffering from these diseases are dependent on one or the other medication prescribed to them by their physicians.

Also, the aging population is increasing Middle East and Africa due to the availability of better healthcare facilities. Increased research and development leading to the launch of effective and novel medications oriented to specific diseases further aids in the surging demand for pharmaceuticals.

Moreover, the emergence of COVID-19 also has increased the demand for various medications worldwide which include vitamin-C tablets and hydroxychloroquine, among others leading to a significant rise in the demand for pharmaceuticals.

OPPORTUNITY

•  Need for Increasing the Efficiency of Work within the Pharmacies

Every pharmacy is trying to do the same things which include correctly and efficiently filling prescriptions, providing high-quality patient care, and maintaining a sustainable business model in which workers have good job satisfaction and consumers are satisfied.

In order to improve the effectiveness of their pharmacy activities in support of overall hospital strategies and priorities to provide high-quality patient-centered care, many hospital and pharmacy leaders have started adopting pharmacy automation systems.

The adoption of enhanced workflow and pharmacy automation software and system has potentially increased the efficiency of the pharmacies. Thereby, the need for increasing the efficiency of work within the pharmacies acts as an opportunity for market growth.

RESTRAINT

• High Capital Investment

Pharmacy automation systems are more costly as compared to manual systems. The price of an average pharmacy automation system starts at USD 59,198.45 but for more exotic versions, it can be as high as USD 591,984.50.

Since the capital investment needed for the pharmacy automation system implementation is significantly high, it makes it difficult to adopt such systems in hospitals and pharmacies in developing nations along with small pharmacies across the globe. Thus, the high capital investment leads to the decreased adoption rate of pharmacy automation systems. Hence, it acts as a restraint for market growth.

CHALLENGE

• Stringent Regulatory Procedures

Hospitals and pharmacies are required to play a crucial role in the drug supply chain of the nation: the distribution of medicines to the public. Among the several regulations — state and federal — that regulate medicine dispensing practices, there are 3 important laws relating to the protection and security of both the general public and practitioners in the industry.

These laws apply to Drug supply chain protection, controlled substance regulation and safety, and pharmaceutical hazardous waste management — and are implemented by the FDA, DEA, and EPA.

Manufacturers of automated pharmaceutical systems, therefore, have to comply with various regulations; maintaining such compliance is a tedious job and can delay product launches. Thus, the stringency of regulatory procedures acts as a challenge to market growth.

Recent Developments

• In January 2023, AmerisourceBergen Corporation announced the completion of its acquisition of PharmaLex Holding GmbH. The acquisition of PharmaLex enhances AmerisourceBergen Corporation’s growth strategy by advancing its leadership in specialty services and Middle East and Africa platform of pharma manufacturer services capabilities.
• In February 2022, Baxter announced that it has received authorization from the Common Vulnerability and Exposures (CVE) program to be a CVE Numbering Authority.

Middle East and Africa Pharmacy Automation Market

The Middle East and Africa pharmacy automation market is segmented into six notable segments based on product, pharmacy type, pharmacy size, application, end user, and distribution channel.

PRODUCT

• SYSTEMS
• SOFTWARE
• SERVICES

On the basis of product, the market is segmented into systems, software, and services.

PHARMACY TYPE

• INDEPENDENT
•  CHAIN
•  FEDERAL

On the basis of pharmacy type, the market is segmented into independent, chain, and federal.

PHARMACY SIZE

• LARGE SIZE PHARMACY
• MEDIUM SIZE PHARMACY
• SMALL SIZE PHARMACY

On the basis of pharmacy size, the market is segmented into large size pharmacy, medium size pharmacy, and small size pharmacy.

APPLICATION

• DRUG DISPENSING AND PACKAGING
• DRUG STORAGE
• INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

On the basis of application, the market is segmented into drug dispensing and packaging, drug storage, and inventory management.

END USER

• INPATIENT PHARMACIES
• OUTPATIENT PHARMACIES
• RETAIL PHARMACIES
• ONLINE PHARMACIES
• CENTRAL FILL/MAIL ORDER PHARMACIES
• PHARMACY BENEFIT MANAGEMENT ORGANIZATIONS
• OTHERS

On the basis of end user, the market is segmented into inpatient pharmacies, outpatient pharmacies, retail pharmacies, online pharmacies, central fill/mail order pharmacies, pharmacy benefit management organizations, and others.

DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL

• DIRECT TENDER
• THIRD PARTY DISTRIBUTOR

On the basis of distribution channel, the market is segmented into direct tender and third party distributor.

Middle East and Africa Pharmacy Automation Market Regional Analysis/Insights

The Middle East and Africa pharmacy automation market is segmented into six notable segments based on product, pharmacy type, pharmacy size, application, end user, and distribution channel.

The countries covered in this market report are Saudi Arabia, South Africa, U.A.E., Israel, Egypt, and the rest of Middle East and Africa.

In 2023, Saudi Arabia is expected to dominate the market due to rising awareness about the advantages of pharmacy automation systems over manual methods.

The country section of the report also provides individual market-impacting factors and changes in regulation in the market domestically that impact the current and future trends of the market. Data points such as new sales, replacement sales, country demographics, regulatory acts, and import-export tariffs are some of the major pointers used to forecast the market scenario for individual countries. Also, the presence and availability of Middle East and Africa brands and the challenges faced due to large or scarce competition from local and domestic brands, and the impact of sales channels are considered while providing forecast analysis of the country data.

Competitive Landscape and Middle East and Africa Pharmacy Automation Market Share Analysis

The Middle East and Africa pharmacy automation market competitive landscape provides details of the competitors. Details included are company overview, company financials, revenue generated, market potential, investment in R&D, new market initiatives, Middle East and Africa presence, production sites and facilities, production capacities, company strengths and weaknesses, product launch, product width and breadth, and application dominance. The above data points provided are only related to the companies' focus on the market.

Some of the major market players operating in the Middle East and Africa pharmacy automation market are Cerner Corporation, Capsa Healthcare, ScriptPro LLC, RxSafe, LLC., MedAvail Technologies, Inc., Asteres Inc., InterLink AI, Inc., BD, Baxter, Fullscript, McKesson Corporation, Innovation Associates, AmerisourceBergen Corporation, UNIVERSAL LOGISTICS HOLDINGS, INC

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