Trip Logs as Proof: What a Hospital Robot Report Should Show

What belongs in a hospital robot trip log?

A useful trip log answers one question: did the robot do what the vendor summary says it did? Every mission should carry timestamps for the request, dispatch, pickup, drop and return, along with the route taken and the zones crossed. Without those, a staff hour figure is a projection, not a record.

Pickup and drop confirmation matter most. A robot that reports arrival but never records a confirmed handoff has not proven the delivery. Log the method used, whether a badge scan, a locked bin or a staff tap, because a reviewer can only audit what the method leaves behind.

• Request, dispatch, pickup, drop and return timestamps, all taken from one clock
• Route identifier and the sequence of corridors, zones and floors crossed
• Confirmation method at pickup and at drop, with a flag for manual completion
• Mission type, such as medication transport, meal tray transport or specimen run
• Elevator call time, wait time and travel time for each lift used
• Exception code with start and end times for every stop, detour or failed attempt
• Recovery owner, meaning the person or dispatch desk that resolved each exception

Why do elevator waits need their own column?

Elevators are where hospital robot trips slow down and where they fail. A 2025 feasibility study at Korea University Guro Hospital logged 122 non urgent robot missions run between June 18 and 29, 2025, recording elevator operating rate, elevator waiting time and travel time alongside passenger and cargo counts.

The study reported that a higher elevator operating rate was strongly associated with more delivery failures. Frequent robot users also showed greater time related pressure on the NASA TLX workload scale, and the authors recommended scheduling deliveries when elevator congestion stays below critical thresholds. An averaged trip time for the whole day hides exactly that pattern.

How do trip logs become a staff hour estimate?

Start with a baseline. Observe how long the manual runs take on the same routes, timing them rather than relying on recollection, and then compare robot missions against that baseline. Pairing time and motion observation with the robot's own task logs is the method a Taiwan intensive care team used.

According to an ISPOR 2026 poster on that program, nurses' daily logistics time fell from 111.34 minutes to 20.43 minutes, an 81.6 percent reduction. The authors found the cost per nursing hour saved exceeded prevailing wage rates, yet argued the freed time could still support better workforce use. Minutes recovered and money saved are separate claims, and a log can only prove the first.

What does a vendor ROI summary leave out?

Relay Robotics publishes a case study on BayCare Health System that reports more than 600 hours saved across four robots and a 99.8 percent reliability rate. Both figures come from the vendor. BayCare has said it planned its own time study to test whether the savings justify the cost.

Ask what the reliability percentage divides by. Missions completed, time without human intervention and trips with no logged exception are three different measures, and a summary rarely says which one it means. The same case study cites an informal executive estimate of about 4,000 nursing hours per year per robot. That figure was never measured, so keep it out of the budget deck until a log supports it.

How strong is the research behind hospital robot time savings?

A November 2025 preprint on two rural German hospitals, which has not been peer reviewed, reported transportation and orientation time savings in two of its three use cases. It did not calculate a full return on investment. That is a fair finding for a pilot and an incomplete one for a capital decision.

Use studies like this to decide what to measure, not what the answer is. Most hospital pilots lose their case in the gap between saved minutes and a changed staffing schedule, so the log has to show whether any hours were actually redeployed.

How should exceptions and failed trips be counted?

Count exceptions as cost, not as noise. A held door, a full elevator that leaves the robot waiting or a blocked corridor each consumes time, and a failed drop usually consumes a staff member's time to recover. Netting those out of a summary makes the robot look faster than the floor experienced it.

Record the recovery owner for every exception. Time that lands on a nurse, a porter or an environmental services worker belongs in the staff hour math, even though it never appears in the robot's own report.

How should a lease quote connect to the log?

Service Robot Co. is a full service commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We are OEM neutral, so we select the robot that fits the route and the floor, then handle deployment and integration, go live support, training and service through a nationwide US engineer network. Robots are provided on a three year lease with one fixed payment quoted after a site assessment, and that assessment includes site mapping.

Before you sign any robot leasing agreement, ask every integrator for the log specification in writing: the fields above, the export format, the elevator data feed and who reviews exceptions. Remote triage and on site dispatch only help if the records show what went wrong and where.