Abstract
Medication dispensing errors are a great risk in pharmacies. These errors can be the result of issues such as heavy workload, misinterpretation of a prescriber's handwriting, or simply handing the wrong medication to the wrong patient. Hence, researchers have recently proposed the use of e-prescription to overcome these issues. Moreover, several mobile apps that use Near Field Communication (NFC) have been proposed for managing patients' medication intake instructions and reminding them about intake times. However, neither the e-prescription nor medication management apps solve dispensing errors. Therefore, we developed an NFC-based system comprised of mobile applications for patients' smartphones to transfer verification information through NFC and a pharmacy management system connected to an NFC reader. Furthermore, to ensure the security of the patient's sensitive information, we require biometric authentication to gain access to the mobile application. This authentication feature is also used to restrict access to the information to the legitimate user only during the medication dispensing process. Finally, we believe the proposed system will help to reduce medication dispensing errors.