Walgreens turns to robots to fill prescriptions, as pharmacists take

NORTHLAKE, Texas — Bright yellow robotic arms are becoming a bigger part of Walgreens‘ workforce.

Inside of a large facility in the Dallas area, they fill thousands of prescriptions for customers who take medications to manage or treat high blood pressure, diabetes or other conditions. Each robot can fill 300 prescriptions in an hour, the company said — roughly the same number that a typical Walgreens pharmacy with a handful of staff may do in a day.

Walgreens Boots Alliance is opening the automated, centralized hubs to keep up in the fast-changing pharmacy industry. The pandemic has intensified the drugstore chain’s need to stay relevant as online pharmacies siphon off sales and more customers have items from toilet paper to toothpaste delivered to their doorstep. The global health crisis has also heightened demand for pharmacists, as hospitals and drugstores hired them to administer Covid vaccines and tests.

That has forced Walgreens and its competitors, CVS Health and Rite Aid, to rethink the role of their stores and pharmacists.

Walgreens’ new CEO, former Starbucks operating chief Roz Brewer, wants to make health care the company’s “growth engine.” It acquired the majority stake of VillageMD, a primary care company, and iA, a pharmacy and health-care automation technology company that is helping it build out the centralized hubs. It is exploring a potential sale of its U.K.-based Boots business.

By 2025, as much as half of Walgreens’ prescription volume from stores could be filled at the automated centers, said Rex Swords, who oversees facilities as Walgreens’ group president of centralized services, operations and planning.

That will free up more of pharmacists’ time to provide health care, Brewer said in an interview with CNBC’s Bertha Coombs.

“We’re doing all of this work, so that the pharmacist has an easier job, so that they can get back to being front and center, building a relationship with that patient and interacting the way they were trained — the work that they love to do,” she said.

Pharmacists will continue to fill time-sensitive medications and controlled substances at local stores as the company expands its use of robots.

Brian Tanquilut, an analyst for Jefferies, said the automation could help Walgreens focus on ways to differentiate from online pharmacies suh as Amazon-owned PillPack and Capsule, and CVS, which owns health insurer Aetna and pharmacy benefits manager Caremark.

“This is a complementary move to some of the health-care strategy they’ve laid out,” he said.

CVS uses robotics to assist in filling prescriptions in its highest volume stores, but through a spokesperson, the company declined to say how much of its overall volume is filled by automation.

Walgreens will…