Patent ID: 8126590

Claim:
A system of dispensing devices, the system comprising: a dispensing device comprising one of a plurality of dispensing devices for dispensing medications at a healthcare facility, and configured with: a plurality of patient-specific bins assigned for exclusive use to a patient, wherein one or more of the patient-specific bins comprises an access restriction that limits medications storable therein to a certain type of medications; and one or more item-specific bins each allocated for assignment to an item to be available for use by a plurality of patients; and a central server computer system, communicatively coupled to the dispensing device, and configured to: analyze a medication order for the patient to identify a first set of medications from the medication order as medications stored in the one or more item-specific bins, the first set of medications being medications that are not exclusively for the patient; analyze the medication order to identify a second set of medications from the medication order as medications to be stored for the patient in the plurality of patient-specific bins assigned to the patient, the second set of medications being medications that are exclusively for the patient; and associate a subset of the second set of medications with one of the patient-specific bins having the access restriction based on the subset comprising the certain type of medications.