Patent ID: 8020725

Claim:
A medicine dispensing apparatus comprising a control means and a plurality of cassettes that contain medicine containers in alignment, each of the cassettes comprising: pressing means for pressing the medicine containers in each of the cassettes toward a front end side of the cassette; dispensing means disposed at the front end portion of each of the cassettes, the dispensing means having a holding recess portion for holding a medicine container; driving means for rotating the dispensing means to a receiving position at which one of the medicine containers in the cassette can be received in the holding recess portion and to a taking out position at which the medicine container held in the holding recess portion can be directly taken out by an operator; display means for displaying whether the cassette contains medicine required to be dispensed from among the plurality of cassettes, the display means being provided on the front end portion of the corresponding cassette; and a driving switch for actuating the driving means to cause rotation of the dispensing means, the driving switch being provided on the corresponding cassette, wherein the control means is operable to control operation of the driving means of the cassettes so as to rotate the dispensing means from the receiving position to the taking out position when the driving switch of the cassette indicated by the display means is turned on and then, when the driving switch is further turned on, rotate the dispensing means from the taking out position to the receiving position and then rotate the dispensing means from the receiving position to the taking out position by the driving means, wherein the medicine dispensing apparatus further comprises an end button which is pressed when a necessary number of mediations are taken out, wherein, when the end button is operated, the control means turns off the display by the display means and controls the driving means to rotate the dispensing means from the taking out position to the receiving position.