Pharmtech Solutions Limited, an entity made up of two young Ghanaian pharmacists have invented a semi-automated system that will eliminate hand-written medication labels and related dispensing errors.

Known as the Approved Label Printer (ALP), the system is a printer device programmed with a specialised application software that generates medication labels that are more readable, legible and free of errors. The app has over 10,000 standard medicines’ dosage templates pre-programmed and verified using the approved reference materials for pharmacies to use with ease. These labels are available on a cloud network shared by all users and can be modified whenever there is a need. Users who want to print medicine labels will have to just search the medicine name, select the appropriate label for that medicine and issue a command to print.

The device is compatible with Android, IOS, and Windows PC’s. The device is re-chargeable, can last for 100 hours when fully charged and does not require any ink or toner to work. This innovation is full proof to ensure pharmacies have the best experience with label generation and patient communication.

According to the founders of the company, Pharmacists Hayford Nkansah Brako and Isaac Nkrumah, the frequency of reports of poor, sloppy and illegible hand-written prescriptions and their associated risks of harm to patients were at the root of developing Approved Label Printer to eliminate the recurrence of human dispensing errors in prescriptions of medicines.

Pharm. Isaac Nkrumah, a co-founder of Pharmtech Solutions in an interview with the Apothecary news said “We want to ensure that every patient leaves the pharmacy with absolute confidence in the process and with the adequate information needed to complete the entire health care recovery cycle”

The Approved Label Printer was officially launched by the President of the Pharmaceutical Society of Ghana, Pharm. Samuel Kow Donkoh during the 2022 Annual General Meeting of Pharmacists in Tamale.