Table 2.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria of articles for the systematic literature review

	Inclusion criteria	Exclusion criteria
Population (P)	Studies performed with inpatients or in hospital settings	Studies performed with outpatients in community settings
Focus of the study, Intervention (I)	Studies utilising automated unit dose dispensing system (UDDS) for drug dispensing in which drugs are first individually packaged and labelled as unit doses without patient information (anonymous) and then assembled patient specifically by robot or manually at the ward Automated UDDS combined with other technologies or interventions in the medication process	Studies using solely original pack dispensing systems, other drug dose dispensing technologies such as automated multi-dose dispensing system (one or more drugs are packed into a pouch or container containing patient information, for each time of administration), various semi-automated dose dispensing technologies (carousels, automatic dispensing cabinets) or manual drug dispensing system Studies only describing the implementation or development of the UDDS Inadequate description of automated drug dispensing process Studies not concerning drug dispensing
Comparison (C)	Control group is not required	–
Outcomes (O)	Outcomes related UDDS functionality such as inpatient’s medication process and medication stock management	No outcomes from the functionality of UDDS
Study design (S)	Peer reviewed journal articles; original articles and systematic review articles	Not peer reviewed publications; letters, editorials, news, commentaries, conference proceedings and non-scientific publications
Time (T)	Articles published between 2000 and 2020	Articles published before 2000 and after 2020
Language	English language articles or foreign language articles with an English abstract	–