A Pediatric Hospital's Delivery Robot Saved 426 Staff Hours in Two Months

Medication runs that pulled staff away from patients

Every hospital runs on small trips. A vial, a tray, a dose that has to reach a patient floor before the next round begins. At a large pediatric hospital on the West Coast, much of that movement fell to staff who walked medication requests from the pharmacy to the patient floors by hand.

Each walk looked minor on its own. Added up across shifts, it pulled people away from bedside work and wore on them physically. Staff who carried medications on foot described foot pain at the end of long days, and the hospital wanted that time spent on patient care instead.

Demand for medication requests did not pause for breaks or nights, so the hospital needed coverage that did not depend on who happened to be free.

Two leased robots on pharmacy-to-floor runs

The hospital leased two robots and put them to work between the pharmacy and patient floors. Each robot stands about 4 feet tall and weighs about 300 pounds, and it fulfills medication requests as it travels.

Because the robots ran around the clock, service carried on during staff breaks and overnight, not only during staffed hours.

Staff did not simply hand over their work. The hospital was still early in learning what the robot could do, and its use grew as that understanding grew. Time that was freed up moved toward stat doses and complex, high-risk medication preparation, work that needs a trained person at the bench.

• Lease two units for the pharmacy-to-floor route
• Run medication requests around the clock, including breaks and nights
• Keep learning the robot's capabilities, since the hospital was early in that process
• Shift freed staff time toward stat doses and high-risk medication preparation

What the first two months and beyond showed

In its first two months in service, the robot travelled more than 35 miles and saved staff 426 hours. These are early-deployment results, measured over a short window, and they describe one hospital's routine rather than a fixed benchmark.

By about two and a half months, the robot had completed more than 1,400 deliveries, covered 73 miles and saved 900 staff hours. The totals kept rising well past the first two months.

Staff estimated that help with medication deliveries gave them back 20 to 30 minutes per delivery. That is a staff estimate, not a measured figure, and a hospital considering the same path should confirm it against its own delivery logs before quoting it.

Hospital leaders also described the cost of a leased robot per hour as lower than the cost of full-time staff doing the same duties. That is an executive's view, not a measured result.

What this means for a hospital delivery robot program

The hospital's results depended on more than the robot itself. They depended on choosing the right route, keeping the unit working around the clock, and giving staff a clear way to hand work over. Those are the parts we handle at Service Robot Co.

We are a full-service, OEM-neutral commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We select the right robots across manufacturers, then finance, deploy, integrate, train, and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network, so a facility works with one partner and one number. We lease robots only, on a 3-year lease with one fixed payment quoted after a site assessment. Facilities exploring robot leasing for business can start with a site assessment and route mapping, then move through go-live support and a robot maintenance service plan.