Talk:Pharmacy automation

Marketing language

This article is rife with marketing language. It reads like a brochure for the industry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.82.255.137 (talk) 19:03, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

More specifically, it seems to incorrectly focus on Kirby Lester. The history section is most absurd, it doesn't even talk about Baker Cells.CPeng (talk) 19:33, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

The article is set in the 1970's when the portable digital tablet counter was invented in Englland by John Kirby and his brother. The warly machine examples are only historical and are not commercialt available. Since it's creation in 2009 the article has been added to by other manufacturers interested parties. It can hardly be considered a "brochure" unless of course you mean one for 1980. It focuses on the inventors the Kirby brothers. The Lester part of the story is down to a marketing director of the original company formed in England called Rod Lester. I believe the talk page has comments from the inventor and the article contributors , has this not been read ? What's a Baker Cell? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.158.164.161 (talk) 01:18, 14 May 2015 (UTC)

With reference to Baker Cell ; this appears to be a modern company who , among many others, offer systems for large industrial appliations. This kind of equipment is unlikely to be cosidered historical development material for a typical high street pharmacy. Quite rightly it should be represented in the article as a future development for large scale applications. This link details the patent. [1] Billy from Bath (talk) 21:14, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Notability

The names Kirby and Lester are now known the world over as founders of the technology we use today to replace the previously labour intensive manual counting of small objects. Their invention was primarily aimed at the pharmacy in the 1960s where large numbers of new medicines were being handled. Many medicines were of various sizes and texture, this made them difficult to handle and count manually. The solution invented by Frank and John Kirby in 1967 formed the basis of a commercial alliance with Rod Lester, the three of them set up a company called Kirby lester Electronics Ltd in Oldham, England. This company split into two seperate arms in 1983. The article needs much more work to explain the progress made since 1967, and need to be less of an advert for the companies products. Historical information and sources of references is currently ongoing. Francis E Williams (talk) 10:59, 27 February 2010 (UTC)

Recent communications recieved, company history from John Kirby 7th March 2010

Dear ----,

Thank you for your kind e-mail. We never thought of ourselves as contributing to the pharmacy industry. The history of the company is on the web site, under "About Kirby Devon"

Kirby Devon Ltd is the original company. It was founded on January 1st 1971 as Kirby Lester Limited. The name was changed to Kirby Oldham Ltd. in 1983 after the split from the American subsidiary, Kirby Lester Inc. It was changed again to Kirby Devon Ltd in January 1989 when we moved to Devon.

Frank and I designed the original KL7 in 1967-70, working at home. Rod Lester took no part in the development but took on sales and marketing when the company started production in 1971.

I had the original idea of how the machine would work and it was my patent, but it was a joint effort getting it to work in a saleable form. It was 3 years of very hard work. I had originally studied heavy electrical engineering before changing over to Medical School and qualifying as a Medical Doctor in 1968. In fact I was Senior House (Casualty) Officer (A&E or ER) in 1970 at North Manchester General Hospital when I filed the patent. I must have been the only hospital doctor in Britain with an oscilloscope, a soldering iron and a drawing board in his room in the Doctors’ Residence. The housekeepers were bemused by all the wires.

Frank originally trained as a Banker but quit to take a job with a local elecronics firm during the development. He died in 1987, a terrible loss.

Since then I have filed other patents. I am attaching two of them. I have almost given up on Britain because of the bureaucracy, regulation and interference. It seems to be turning into a totalitarian state. Our home market was wiped out in 1998 when the EU mandated blister packing for tablets.

I reduced the UK workforce from 150 to 3, but recently I have decided to expand again. technology changes have been so remarkable over the past 20 years it has made things easier for me. I still do all the design work, which is now a matter of programming microcontrollers and doing the mechanical drawings on a laptop computer. Metal is now cut perfectly by laser and machining is done on CNC machines.

We will be getting back to pharmaceutical machinery in futue,

I hope this helps,

Best Regards, John Kirby

Posted by Francis E Williams (talk) 14:55, 8 March 2010 (UTC) Perhaps if anyone has advice as to how to include this in the article it would be most welcome.

I will take a look over the next day or so. Chaosdruid (talk) 13:02, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Moved and re-written 2010-11-20

To remove the trade name added by the original author of the article, and to improve structure.Francis E Williams (talk) 01:18, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

I have removed more company/product references and also removed the advert tag. You can add neutral captions to the images but no product IDs please. WK articles cannot be commercial nor promotional. Rlsheehan (talk) 16:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I have added country of origin to the various stages of design evolution to remove bias from the article.Francis E Williams (talk) 11:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

IV Admixture Automation

The article currently includes several links to videos of a Robotic IV Automation system (RIVA) in action, but there is no information available on IV automation in the body of the article. I represent the company that developed RIVA through my PR agency, so I will not make those additions. Here are third party links: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] Auraesque (talk) 17:37, 28 September 2012 (UTC)