BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX), a global medical technology leader, announced that Fairview Health Services is the first U.S. health system to implement the BD Vmax 160. The next-generation pharmacy automation robot is designed to support high-volume, centralized outpatient pharmacies in efficiently managing the growing complexity of specialty medications and refrigerated therapies.
Fairview operates one of the nation’s largest health system pharmacy networks, filling an average of 20,000 prescriptions per week and providing medication access for patients across Minnesota through a network of 25 outpatient pharmacies and mail-order services. To keep pace with growing demand, the health system is making significant investments in centralized pharmacy operations that expand medication access, increase fulfillment capacity, and improve the experience for patients who rely on increasingly complex therapies.
Many of the medications driving pharmacy growth today, including GLP-1s, biologics and other specialty therapies, are packaged, stored and fulfilled differently than traditional vial-based prescriptions. At the same time, retail pharmacy closures, a growing aging population, workforce shortages, and the increasing prevalence of pharmacy deserts are creating new health care access challenges for patients.
To address these evolving demands, health systems are adopting centralized pharmacy operations and automation technologies that can support more complex medication fulfillment workflows. Widely used across Europe, BD Vmax introduces high-speed unit-of-use automation to the U.S. market, transforming how boxed medications are stored, tracked and fulfilled in central fill environments. Fairview’s deployment of the BD Vmax 160 builds on its broader collaboration with BD and existing investment in pharmacy automation technologies, including the BD Parata™ Max 2 high-speed vial filling robot.
“The future of pharmacy care will be shaped by health systems that can meet patients where they are, while creating more efficient and scalable models for medication access. Fairview’s investment in centralized pharmacy services and intelligent automation reflects a bold vision for the future, demonstrating how health systems can transform pharmacy operations and expand access to therapies for the communities they serve.”
-Matt Sassone, President, BD Pharmacy Automation
Purpose-built for centralized fulfillment environments, the BD Vmax 160 is designed to automate labor-intensive workflows. The system helps pharmacies optimize inventory management, reduce manual dispensing activities and improve visibility into medication expiration dates, lot tracking and recall management processes, with features including:
- Automated inventory replenishment, enabling overnight loading and inventory optimization with BD EasyLoad, which delivers a 3-second loading time per tote with 99.8% accuracy
- Automated labeling, eliminating time-consuming manual tasks while meeting labeling requirements for all 50 states
- Cold-chain capability, designed for 2–8°C environments to support proper medication storage and enhance medication safety
- Smart expiry detection that flags and tracks expiration dates upon loading and automatically blocks expired medications from dispensing, helping to reduce waste and support compliance
BD, a leading provider of pharmacy automation and robotics solutions for healthcare, is working toward a more connected and intelligent end-to-end pharmacy environment. The BD Vmax represents a key advancement in this vision, complementing BD’s extensive range of pharmacy automation technologies and the BD Incada™ Connected Care Platform. Together, these solutions enable health systems to automate and coordinate pharmacy operations across central pharmacy, dispensing, and fulfillment, helping reduce manual intervention and supporting the transition toward more autonomous medication management. By integrating workflows throughout the medication-use process, BD helps healthcare providers deliver the right care to patients at every stage of their healthcare journey.
