HCA Florida JFK Relay Robots Cover Gaps Tubes Miss

What Dash and Daisy are doing at HCA Florida JFK

Relay Robotics has put two autonomous delivery robots, Dash and Daisy, to work at HCA Florida JFK Hospital in Atlantis, Florida. The company announced the deployment in a release dated Sept. 30, 2026. The robots carry lab specimens, pharmacy orders, telemetry and monitoring equipment, and medications and lab materials to areas the hospital's pneumatic tube system does not reach.

For a hospital operator, the useful question is not whether a robot can carry a box down a corridor. It is which routes earn one. The HCA Florida JFK rollout is a working example of how to answer that, and the lessons travel well beyond Florida.

PYMNTS reported that the tube system does not reach some areas the robots now serve, and that HCA Florida JFK and Hancock Health are both adding delivery robots on more routes. That detail matters. The robots were placed where the existing network stopped, not as a replacement for it.

Why a tube network still leaves gaps

Pneumatic tubes are fast and well proven for small payloads moving between fixed stations. A U.S. patent document notes that pneumatic tube systems are used to transfer blood samples, medicines and other biological material within hospitals. The same document notes that tubes, mobile carts and robotic messengers have each been used to move specimens.

The gap is geographic and operational. A tube station has to be built into the route, so a wing, a satellite area or a floor outside that path depends on a person. Staff end up walking the item themselves, and a clinician or aide leaves a patient-care area to do it. Relay says even simple deliveries can pull clinical staff away from units.

Relay's own release says Emergency Departments depend on timely movement of specimens, medications, equipment and supplies. That is where a late hand-carry costs the most, and where a robot's schedule has to be dependable rather than occasional.

How the robots move through a building

Authorized users load a secure, lockable compartment and select a destination. The robot travels on its own, uses elevators and badge-access doors, and staff at the destination retrieve the item. Relay describes the robots as support for staff, handling point-to-point trips rather than replacing people.

Relay says the robots use LiDAR, sensors and computer vision, and that they integrate with elevators, secure doors, fire and life-safety systems and hospital IT without major construction or physical tracks. Its product page adds that during installation, elevators are configured so the robot can call them and complete deliveries without human intervention. The page lists a 10-gallon capacity and insert bins of various sizes.

Relay was founded in 2013 and was formerly known as Savioke, based in San Jose, Calif., according to Unite.AI. For a hospital buyer, a vendor's history matters less than its installed base and how it supports those sites after go-live, so ask about both.

What the vendor numbers do and do not prove

Relay reports more than 99 percent delivery reliability, a 99.8 percent delivery success rate across more than 30 major U.S. hospitals, and more than 1,000 deliveries per month in a hospital environment. The company also reports more than 1.5 million deliveries completed worldwide. These are vendor-reported figures that we have not independently verified.

Read them as a starting point for your own measurement. A success rate tells you the robot arrived. It does not tell you how long an item waited for an elevator, whether a staff member was pulled from a unit to meet it, or how often a human had to clear a door. Track those yourself during a pilot.

Which corridors and routes justify a robot

Start with the tube map, not the robot catalog. Lay the tube stations over the floor plan and mark every place a specimen, pharmacy order or medication leaves the tube path and needs a person to carry it. Those gaps are your candidate routes.

Then screen each candidate against a short set of questions:

• How many trips does the route generate per shift, and at what times?
• Does the route cross elevators, badge-access doors or fire-rated barriers the robot must use?
• What does a human carrier give up to make the trip today?
• Is the destination staffed to receive the item within a predictable window?
• Do the item types fit a secure, lockable compartment of the size the robot carries?

How to weigh a route against a robot

A route that runs several times per shift, crosses two or three controlled doors and pulls a nurse off a unit is a strong candidate. A route that runs twice a day through an open corridor probably is not. Count trips before you count robots.

Keep the screen honest about the handoff. If the receiving desk is unstaffed at 3 a.m., the robot will arrive to an item no one collects. That failure looks like a robot problem on the dashboard, but it is a workflow problem, and it belongs in the pilot criteria.

What integration work takes before go-live

Relay's CEO, Sultan Mehrabi, said that integrating elevators, secure doors, fire systems and hospital IT all at once was not simple. Plan around that. The integration work, not the vehicle, usually sets the schedule.

Relay describes a typical hospital deployment, including integration hardware, floor mapping and staff training, as taking about 8 to 12 weeks, with onsite installation generally taking 1 to 2 weeks. Those are vendor-reported timelines. Your elevator vendors, door-control contractors and life-safety teams will each run their own calendar, and their dates tend to govern yours.

Where Service Robot Co. fits in the decision

Service Robot Co. is an OEM-neutral integrator. We choose the right robots across manufacturers for each route, then finance, deploy, integrate, train and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network. A hospital team gets one point of contact from route screening through go-live support.

Our offer is a lease. Financing runs on a 3-year lease with one fixed payment quoted after a site assessment. That assessment is where the route screening above happens, so a hospital can see candidate corridors and the integration scope before it commits to anything.