Appeal No. 2006-1272
Application No. 10/104,615
code on the package when it is dispensed from the machine, which clearly does not make
efficient use of the technician, nurse, or other personnel at the remote sites [supplemental
brief, page 8, 2nd paragraph].
The examiner responds that Liff discloses “a remote pharmacist concept where a
single pharmacist is connected to a plurality of remote technicians and the remote pharmacist
verifies prescription information for a technician at one of the plurality of remote sites, and
the technician then fills the prescription by performing the mechanical aspects thereof, e.g.
see Liff col. 11 line 35 to col. 13 line 42, Figs. 11A, 11B, 12” [answer, page 9]. The
examiner states that Liff explicitly discloses a system where “the expertise of a registered
pharmacist operating at an RPH can be shared among a large number of pharmacy
technicians, increasing the level of medical care provided in a cost-effective manner”
[answer, pages 11-12, see also Liff, col. 12, lines 20-23].
We note that Liff teaches (in addition to the verification step performed by the
pharmacist discussed supra), an electronic verification method performed by the technician
at the remote site who uses, in one embodiment, a handheld bar code reader 41 (Fig. 1) to
verify proper loading of the RCD cabinet 20 and proper dispensing of each pharmaceutical
package [Liff, see fig. 1, col. 6, line 46]. We find that the verification process performed by
the pharmacist at the central location, in coordination with the verification performed by the
technician at the remote location (using bar code reader 41, Fig. 1), does make efficient use
of the technician or other personnel at the remote site because bar code verification is less
-13-
Page: Previous 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007