BOZEN, Italy, November 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Health-Robotics today announced that TOSHO Inc., the global pioneer in Pharmacy Automation since 1971, has selected Health Robotics’ CytoCare(TM) Robot after an extensive due diligence process undertaken by TOSHO’s engineering and management teams, and by TOSHO’s leading customer Kameda Medical Center. This investigative process included multiple visits to Health Robotics’ factory and “live” customer locations at Bozen General Hospital, Campus Biomedico University, Policlinico Umberto I, and San Camilo Hospital. Conversely, Health Robotics has selected TOSHO Inc. as its exclusive distributor and service provider in Japan. The companies will jointly implement CytoCare(TM) at TOSHO’s Oncology-focused customers in Japan and have agreed to adapt and localize Health Robotics’ software applications for the Japanese market.
“We are very pleased to have been selected by Health Robotics as their exclusive partner in Japan and for the response that our customers have shown to CytoCare(TM). With the extensive tradition that TOSHO has in Pharmacy Automation we were greatly surprised by the innovation and quick development demonstrated by Health Robotics. Having personally witnessed how European hospitals greatly benefit from Health Robotics’ products within Chemotherapy and Monoclonal Antibody Therapies, I believe CytoCare(TM) is a truly breakthrough technology that positively complements TOSHO’s Oral Medication Automation solutions. We look forward to offering our five-hundred Oncology-focused customers in Japan the unique value proposition of combining Oral and Hazardous IV Medication Automation solutions with CytoCare(TM), and in parallel initiating a similar due diligence process for IV Station(TM), the new non-hazardous IV Admixtures Robot recently developed by Health Robotics. We look forward to seeing IV Station(TM) for the first time at the December 2008 ASHP Meeting in Orlando,” stated Yoshihito Omura, General Manager, TOSHO, Inc.
Health-Robotics has developed and installed the world’s first and only totally automated system for safe preparation of patient-specific hazardous IV Admixtures in Europe, the United States of America, Asia-Pacific, and the Middle East. While other companies have for years made promises of robotic IV automation products, and even showcased marketing demonstrations of competing solutions that were supposed to exist as far back as ten years ago, the fact remains that CytoCare(TM) is the only available solution that currently exists anywhere in the world to automatically compound and prepare ready-to-administer hazardous and non-hazardous IV Admixtures, and that has been proven in a “live” hospital pharmacy environment.
“Everyone in our company is extremely proud to have been selected by TOSHO Inc. and to partner with a company with such a long and successful tradition in Pharmacy Automation. The fact that, despite TOSHO Inc. clearly having both the financial ability and the technical know-how to develop a competing solution to CytoCare(TM), they have instead chosen to market and support our Robots means a great deal to Health Robotics and all of our employees. We are very pleased to be working with such a world-class organization as TOSHO Inc. They join a growing list of prestigious health care providers all over the world that have previously adopted our IV Admixture Robotic solutions CytoCare(TM) and IV Station(TM),” stated Werner Rainer, CEO of Health Robotics.
“From a customer adoption perspective I would like to share that in the two years since we started this journey, we have installed more IV robots than all of our competitors have sold in over ten years of operations, and we have received purchase orders for one thousand more robots than all of our competitors combined. We are very pleased to see great progress in the hospital pharmacies’ reception for CytoCare(TM) in new countries such as Germany, Australia, Japan, Taiwan, France, Belgium, Czech Republic, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Slovakia, Austria, and also in the United States. I am also pleased to share that extensive tests with thousands of IV doses conducted by the University of Colorado in Denver, Rigshospitalet at the University of Copenhagen, Campus Biomedico University Hospital in Rome, Bozen General Hospital in Bolzano, and at Charing Cross NHS Trust in London have proven CytoCare(TM) features preventing cross-contamination and delivering sterile and extremely accurate ready-to-administer hazardous and non-hazardous IV Admixtures in the real-world hospital pharmacy environment, as opposed to our competitors who are still making ten-year old claims of studies done by themselves at their manufacturing facilities with no independent verification of such tests at any hospital pharmacy in the world,” concluded Werner Rainer, CEO of Health Robotics.
About Health Robotics:
Health Robotics is the global leading supplier in the automation of life-critical intra-venous patient-specific medication preparation, compounding, and dispensing, providing health care facilities around the world with robotics and software automation solutions. The world-leading solutions CytoCare(TM) and IV Station(TM) have and will greatly contribute to ease global pharmacies’ growing pressures to improve patient safety through the effective and efficient production of sterile, accurate, and ready-to-administer IVs, to decrease life-threatening medication errors and cross-contamination risks, and to work more efficiently, increase throughput, reduce IV waste, and contain spiralling costs.
About TOSHO:
TOSHO Inc, founded in Tokyo in 1971, with over 500 employees, 18,000 customers, and annual revenues of US $213 million was the pioneer in the development of Pharmacy Automation solutions for oral, powder, vials, and Medication Dispensing. TOSHO’s solutions have become the gold standard in hospital and retail pharmacies in Japan, Asia and Europe.
CONTACT: For additional information, please contact: Health Robotics,
Gaspar G. DeViedma, in Europe: +39-346-963-4934, in America:
+1-609-980-7976 , gaspar.deviedma@health-robotics.com; TOSHO, Inc., Jojo
Kishimoto, in Japan: +81337450790, kishimoto@to-net.co.jp
