BD Advances Intelligent Robotics to Transform the Future of Pharmacy Care at Fairview

BD (Becton, Dickinson and Company) (NYSE: BDX), a leading global medical technology company, today announced that Fairview Health Services has become the first health system in the United States to deploy the BD Vmax 160, a next generation pharmacy automation robot designed to help health systems manage the increasing complexity of specialty therapies and refrigerated medicines in high-volume, centralized outpatient pharmacy operations.

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.

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

As one of the largest providers of pharmacy automation and robotics solutions in healthcare, BD is advancing a vision for a more connected, intelligent end-to-end pharmacy.