A Large Children's Hospital in California Reclaims 1,620 Staff Hours

Medication Runs That Pulled Staff Away From Bedside Work

Medication never waits in a children's hospital. Doses, infusions and pharmaceutical items have to reach care areas around the clock, and each trip has traditionally fallen to a person who could be doing something else.

At this hospital, carrying medications across the campus was work spread across pharmacy staff and nurses. Staff in the Infusion Center described the cycle plainly: leave the unit, walk to the pharmacy, collect the medication, walk back, repeat. One nurse said she used to make that run several times a day.

The pharmacy's chief officer put a number on the cost of each run, saying staff recoup 20 to 30 minutes per delivery once the trip is handed to a robot. The physical load mattered too. The hospital said that staff who once carried medications on foot found relief from foot pain after the change.

Two Robots on 24/7 Routes, Started in December 2022

The hospital began using its hospital delivery robots in December 2022. Two robots carry medications and pharmaceutical items on routes through the building, and they run 24 hours a day rather than on a staff schedule.

The deployment rests on a simple division of labor. The robots take the corridor legs, and people keep the clinical work, the handoffs and the judgment calls. Because the fleet is not tied to a shift, staff can step away for breaks while medications keep moving, and the hospital says the robots made that possible.

• Two robots assigned to medication and pharmaceutical routes through the hospital
• Routes operate 24 hours a day, independent of staff shifts
• Pharmacy staff hand off runs instead of walking them across campus
• Infusion Center staff request medications without leaving the unit
• Recent volume of 25 to 30 deliveries a day uses about half of fleet capacity

What the Hospital Measured in Just Over Four Months

In just over four months, the two robots made more than 2,500 deliveries and traveled 132 miles. The hospital reports that those trips saved staff more than 383,000 steps and 1,620 hours of work time.

Recent volume runs at 25 to 30 deliveries a day, which the hospital says uses about half of the fleet's capacity. That leaves headroom on the existing robots, a planning figure that matters to any site weighing how many units its route load justifies.

For the infusion nurse who used to run to the pharmacy several times a day, the change was felt in a different way: the corridor trips stopped. The hospital also reports that staff who carried medications on foot were spared that strain.

Results like these depend on route length, medication volume and how a hospital schedules its runs, so a site weighing a similar fleet should map its own traffic before projecting savings.

What This Means for Hospitals Weighing Delivery Robots

This study describes another organization's deployment, not a Service Robot Co. project. What it illustrates is the work that comes before and after a robot arrives. Service Robot Co. is 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 one vendor covers the whole lifecycle.

For a hospital, that starts with a site assessment of routes, elevator access, medication flow and peak hours. As a vendor neutral robot integrator, we choose the platform that fits those routes rather than working from a single catalogue. The hospital then receives the robot on our three-year lease, with one fixed payment quoted after the assessment, which keeps the cost predictable across the term.

Once the robots are live, go live support, staff training and a robot maintenance service plan keep people working with the fleet rather than around it. Service visits are dispatched through our nationwide US engineer network, and the plan details are agreed during the assessment so response expectations are written down before the first run.