Preparation of Personalized Medicines through Collaborative Robots: A Hybrid Approach to the End-User Development of Robot Programs

Galenic formulations are personalized medicines prepared by pharmacists in their laborato ries. They are produced in small batches considering single patients’ characteristics, such as age, gender, allergies, and the like, thus contributing to responsible health. The production process is performed manually with the support of mechanic machines. This activity is time-consuming, prone to errors, and subject to quality variations. In this paper, we propose the integration of collaborative robots into the galenic formulation process to obtain several advantages, such as increased productivity, reduced variability, improved accuracy, and minimized risks associated with human error. Additionally, the use of robots can alleviate the physical burden on human operators, allowing them to focus on higher-level tasks that require critical thinking and decision-making. To achieve this goal, a software application, called PRAISE (Pharmaceutical Robotic and AI System for End users), has been developed; it is meant to support end users (i.e., pharmacists) in defining robot programs suitable to the case at hand. This application is conceived as an End-User Development (EUD) environment, which implements a hybrid interaction approach based on a natural language interface leveraging Large Language Models and a graphical interface to check and possibly revise the user-created robot programs. A user study carried out with nine pharmacists demonstrates the validity of the approach.