About Next Dispensers

Next Dispensers B.V. was founded in 2014 with the aim of developing a new generation of products for the pharmaceutical industry, the MedMaster Series. Their goal is to improve the reliability of medication dispensing to the benefit of the pharmacist and the patient. As of today they work with a dedicated team of innovative professionals and Synadia has been their main partner, helping to realise this revolutionary innovation from the start.

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The challenge

As Next Dispensers was founded to launch a new generation of products for the pharmaceutical industry, the partnership with Synadia started with just an idea that the owners had in mind. Current systems that pharmacists use for medicine dispensing are all based on technology from the 1980’s. No new revolutionary innovation had emerged, so isn’t there a way that we can do this smarter, safer and most cost efficient? The idea was to launch a new product line that used advanced software to be able to accurately dispense large amounts of different type of medicines. The goals was to provide pharmacists with automatically selected pouch of pills that matched the exact prescription of each of their patients. The fact that the concept needed to be created from scratch, makes this an exiting challenge or the Synadia team.

Our approach

As the project needed to be shaped from scratch, the Synadia team organised several brainstorms to generate ideas and work towards to most suitable set up. Once the team decided on the idea that had the most potential the actual elaboration could start. As this project included an extensive hardware component, Synadia joined forces with their partner Dente Engineering. In close cooperation with all parties involved the actual specifications were defined and an initial project plan was created.

Once everything was clear, all parties could start working on the development of the first prototype. This prototype included the actual machine, electronics and the required software. To make sure all specifications were met an extensive testing face was started. This face created the possible to learn, optimise and improve the first prototype and work towards a working concept.

This working concept was the base for the development of the other packaging lines within the MedMasters series. Nowadays the product-line includes three types of machines that match the need of any pharmasist or hospital.

Deliverables

Synadia managed to deliver a working concept called ‘The MedMasters Series’ . The product-line consists of 3 types of products that vary in the amount of cassettes and pills they are able to dispense. Making the product suitable for any hospital or pharmacist. Each of these products are able to reassure increased patient safety, high efficiency and improved workflows. The packing lines are able to fill 2 pouches per second and they are designed to handle up to 2000 different medications!

  • Initialisation plan for MVP

  • Hardware design in co-op with Denta Engineering

  • Manufacturing software package

  • Smartfactory software with ERP integration

  • Custom IoT devices to control each cassette

  • Medicine validation via handheld set up

  • Extensive testing and proof of concept

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The system of the Medmaster® works much more efficient than pharmacists expect. The explorers of Synadia always look beyond the standard processes and make the impossible possible!”

Rene Olthof

CEO Next Dispensers

Automatic processing of doctor receipts

Doctors or other specialists can send receipts directly into the MedMasters system via an API connection. From the moment that new recipes are received by the system, the entire process can be tracked. From collecting the right medicines to validating the accuracy. Synadia integrated a broad variety of features such as stock-management, canister management, tray management, dashboards en many more.

Real-time information coming from the machines itself is also integrated, making it possible to control multiple dispensing machines from one central location.

By equipping the machines with new programmable logic controller (PLC) software, orders are automatically processed without the assistance of an operator. Reducing your labour costs significantly.

Accurate dispensing with up to 500 cassettes

To create the possibility to work with a large set of cassettes, but still be able to maintain the highest level of accuracy, custom made electronics were integrated within the MedMasters Series. Together with Sigmatek & Sigmacontrol, Synadia created a solution that combined all devices into one big network. As a result, all individual modules can communicate at the very fast pace of 2 mili seconds. This communication includes validations of each step of the process. If any errors occur, it would be detected right away. A very imported element for this type of product, as the accuracy level needs to be 100%.