The average acquisition costs are 118,400 euros (n= 72, ơ = 27.01) and average installation costs are 23,000 euros. The service life for tax purposes is 15 years [16].
Assuming a linear depreciation, the total costs of the robotic dispensing machine per accounting period can be calculated in consideration of the capital costs as follows (Table 2) [17].
Costs situation Figure 1 and Table 3 show that 12 months after installation of the robotic dispensing machine, the costs situation in the pharmacies surveyed deteriorated in only 6% of cases. In 50% of the pharmacies the costs situation improved and in 44% it remained unchanged. Thus, in 94% of the pharmacies surveyed the costs situation either remained the same or improved. Pharmacies in a sales category of greater than 2 million euros annual net sales appear to benefit more from costs savings than pharmacies with a lower annual sales volume.