IU Health piloting delivery robots at two hospitals
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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowHigh tech hospital deliveries at two central Indiana hospitals are changing the game for patients and nurses alike.
IU Health North Hospital in Carmel and IU Health Tipton Hospital have a new team member, but it’s one that doesn’t wear scrubs. The hospitals are pilot testing a robot that can make deliveries throughout their various units.
The robots are working mostly with the lab and pharmacy teams at the hospitals to move medications throughout the hospital and deliver samples to the hospitals labs.
Janice Vadas, director of allied health at IU Health North, says the idea was born out of an idea to help out an already shortened staff in the pharmacy and nursing departments.
“Everything that is delivered from pharmacy to a unit or to lab is actually hand delivered,” Vadas said. “We decided to put together a business case for both Tipton and North and…we were able to pilot the robot at Tipton and North for four months to see if it actually does reduce that amount of time that we’ve got team members leaving the units and delivering things.”
The health system says team members were spending 35 days per year making hand deliveries at IU Health Tipton and 45 days per year at IU Health North.
The goal of the robots is to allow staff to spend more time on patient-facing duties and working with medications and lab samples.
“It will be the inpatient units. It will be the pharmacy, the lab, of course, the emergency room, and at North, the pediatric hematology oncology clinic will probably be a big user,” Vadas said. “We have a lot of medications that we prepare in the pharmacy and need to deliver up there. They’re hazardous, so they can’t be tubed, but the robot, IU-D2, will be able to take it right up there, and he goes right into the clinic. And so the kids will get to see him too. So that’s going to be a big win.”
Vadas said the robots can even call elevators on their own.
“It does work through through the WiFi system, and we coordinated with the elevator company and it’s able to send signals,” she said. “You’ll see the robot standing in front of the elevator, and then all of a sudden the button will light up magically like somebody pushed it and when it goes in, the floor button will light up just like it’s somebody has pushed it as well. It can determine where it is not only based upon the Wi Fi connections but barometric pressure between the floors.”
The robot will not be replacing any jobs but will help staff stay on their units rather than leaving to make hand deliveries. At Tipton specifically, Vadas said the robots will help prevent the hospital’s smaller teams from losing a quarter or even half of their team members for a period of time.
