Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre: ten years automating the medication management cycle with Athos™

The challenge: a medication management cycle at large-hospital scale

Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre is one of the largest public hospitals in Spain and a referral center for the Madrid Health Service (Servicio Madrileño de Salud). Running the medication management cycle at a facility of this size means coordinating thousands of professionals, dozens of inpatient units, the surgical suite, hematology-oncology and an outpatient area with very high daily activity.

In that context, the challenges facing any Hospital Pharmacy Department multiply: ensuring end-to-end medication traceability, preventing stockouts and expired products, freeing nursing staff from administrative tasks and, above all, strengthening patient safety with every dispensing transaction.

The solution: an Athos™ ecosystem that has grown with the hospital

The collaboration between 12 de Octubre and APD has not been a one-off project, but a roadmap built year after year, together with the hospital and its professionals. Today the hospital has the Athos™ ecosystem deployed across virtually the entire medication management cycle:

• Dispensing on the nursing units – Athos™ Dosys. Around a hundred automated dispensing cabinets (ADCs) in inpatient units, the surgical suite, hematology, oncology and compounding.
• Automated storage in the hospital pharmacy – Athos™ Storage. Horizontal and vertical carousels, including refrigerated models for temperature-sensitive medications, that optimize space and speed up order picking.
• Outpatients – Athos™ Celeris. Dispensing workstations, room-temperature and refrigerated storage robots, and a self-service kiosk to improve the outpatient experience.
• Unit dose repackaging – Athos™ uniBOT and uniPACK. Cutting and packaging systems that keep every dose identified all the way to the patient’s bedside.
• Secure storage for controlled substances – Athos™ Dosys Narcotics. Control and recording of medications subject to special control, with smart bins that provide individual access.
• Centralized management – Athos™ STOCK. The software that integrates all the equipment and automates restocking and supplier orders.

Results: more control, more efficiency and more time for patients

The hospital’s own data reflect the impact of a decade of hospital pharmacy automation:

• Savings in medication consumption. A study conducted by the hospital on its ADC clusters shows significant savings in total consumption.
• Better control of expiration dates and stock. Automated inventory management reduces waste and stockouts, with restocking and supplier orders generated automatically from Athos™ STOCK.
• Less space, more capacity. The automated storage carousels manage more than one million units in a fraction of the space of a conventional storeroom.
• Data for decision-making. Digitizing the entire cycle provides reliable, real-time information for planning purchases, consumption and resources.
• Everything on a single platform. Integrating all the equipment with Athos™ STOCK and with the hospital’s systems prevents duplication and transcription errors.
• Patient-focused nursing. By automating administrative tasks such as counts, orders or record-keeping, nursing staff spend fewer hours on management and more time on care.

The scale of the project speaks for itself: thousands of hospital professionals use Athos™ systems every day, and these systems exchange tens of millions of data messages with the hospital’s systems each week. Thousands of units are dispensed through Athos™ Dosys every day, hundreds of thousands of medications move through Athos™ Storage every week, and in 2025 alone more than 1.5 million doses were repackaged.

Next steps: toward a closed-loop medication management cycle

The collaboration continues to move forward with new shared goals: high system availability, automatic traceability of orders to the hospital pharmacy, home dispensing with remote monitoring and safe administration at the patient’s bedside. The ultimate goal remains the same: ensuring that every patient receives the right medication, at the right dose and at the right time.

Frequently asked questions