How a Danish superhospital improved working conditions with a robot

Just an hour south of Copenhagen in Denmark, lies the medieval town of Køge. And, despite its quiet appearance, a lot is changing. By 2022, the local Køge hospital will have been expanded by 130,000 m2 - making it a ‘super hospital’ with capacity for 400,000 outpatient visits and 90,000 hospitalizations per year. The hospital is investing in innovative measures in order to ensure the smooth running of the hospital as it expands, including the implementation of modern technology like autonomous mobile robots (AMRs).

Challenge

In order to prevent equipment shortages, the hospital’s service assistants were making weekly deliveries to the hospital departments. This manual procedure was uncomfortable and involved heavy lifting, it also took up the staff’s valuable time.

Approach

The hospital implemented a MiR100 AMR to transport sterile disposable equipment daily to five of the hospital departments. The robot, who gained the nickname ‘Optimus,’ travels more than 10 kilometers per week, improving service, minimizing storage space, saving steps and preventing shortages.

“Staff refer to the robot as a colleague, and ’he’ has—in a few weeks—become part of the environment. It is indicative of the way we humans quickly perceive new technologies as a natural part of everyday life. With MiR’s technology, we free service assistants from logistics tasks to warmer tasks like patient care. We have already achieved enormous gains by introducing this autonomous technology.” - Johnny Hansen, Operations Manager for Zealand University Hospital.

Results

By implementing a mobile robot from MiR, the hospital has improved its workflow and minimized waiting times thanks to more frequent and targeted deliveries. The results from the AMR have been so positive that the hospital would like to automate other transportation tasks in the facility, such as the delivery of medicines from hospital pharmacies and laboratories.