Patent ID: 8407068

Claim:
A medicine management apparatus comprising: a medicine storage which stores a plurality of medicines used at a site of medical care; a detecting mechanism that, when a medicine handling personnel manipulates the apparatus to store or retrieve a target accommodated medicine to be accommodated in the apparatus, physically detects the target accommodated medicine from the plurality of medicines for which the apparatus is manipulated, differentiating the target accommodated medicine from other accommodated medicines; an accommodated medicine counter which counts each type of the plurality of medicines; a stored or retrieved accommodated medicine information recorder which records, on a recording medium, stored or retrieved accommodated medicine information relating to accommodated medicines that are stored or retrieved; a display unit which at least displays the stored or retrieved accommodated medicine information; a format converter which converts a format of the stored or retrieved accommodated medicine information in order to allow an external database to store the stored or retrieved accommodated medicine information; a communicating unit which transmits at least retrieved accommodated medicine information thus converted to the database; a controller which at least controls the stored or retrieved medicine information recorder, the display unit, the format converter and the communicating unit in an integrated manner; a stored or retrieved non-accommodated article input unit which, when a medicine handling personnel stores or retrieves a non-accommodated article not stored in the medicine storage, accepts an input regarding the non-accommodated article stored or retrieved; and a stored or retrieved non-accommodated article information recorder which records, on a recording medium, stored or retrieved non-accommodated article information which relates to non-accommodated articles that are stored or retrieved, wherein the stored or retrieved non-accommodated article input unit accepts an input for each set of articles comprising at least one non-accommodated article.