a tertiary hospital intensive care unit in Taiwan
A Taiwan ICU Delivery Robot Program Cuts Nurse Walking by 1,505 Meters a Day
How a tertiary Taiwan ICU cut nurse transport time 81.6 percent with delivery robots and 1,505 fewer walking meters a day. Results and costs explained.
Deployment at a glance
- 81.6%
- Less nurse logistics time, 111.34 to 20.43 minutes daily
- 1,505 m
- Less nurse walking per day in the ICU
- NT$2,984
- Cost per nursing hour saved, in New Taiwan dollars
Based on a documented real-world deployment. Figures are from public reporting; the organization is not named.
Nurses carrying the unit's transport load
In this tertiary medical center intensive care unit in Taiwan, transport was work nurses did by hand. Routine runs across the unit were made on foot by the nurses themselves, and the walking added up over every shift. Each minute spent on logistics was a minute away from the bedside.
Before the robot program, nurses' active logistics time stood at 111.34 minutes a day. The walking behind that time was measurable, which gave the unit a clear baseline against which any new model would have to be judged.
A robot assisted logistics model in place of manual transport
The study set usual care, where nurses carried out transport themselves, against a robot assisted logistics model in which delivery robots took over those runs. The comparison was framed from the hospital's perspective, so costs and savings were weighed on the hospital's side of the ledger.
Evidence came from two streams. Time and motion observation recorded how nurses spent their logistics minutes, and robot task logs recorded what the machines actually did. Pairing the two gave the comparison a direct, observed basis rather than a model alone.
Costs were annualized over a seven year equipment life at a 3 percent discount rate, so the program's expense could be set against the nursing time it released.
- Observe manual nurse transport in the ICU and record active logistics time and walking distance
- Run the robot assisted logistics model and log each robot task
- Compare nurse time and walking distance under both models
- Annualize program cost over the equipment life and convert the result to cost per nursing hour saved
Time, distance and cost under the robot model
Nurses' active logistics time fell from 111.34 minutes to 20.43 minutes a day, an 81.6 percent reduction. Daily nurse walking distance dropped by 1,505 meters, the headline figure of this case.
The program's cost came to NT$2,984 per nursing hour saved. That figure exceeded prevailing wage rates for nurses, and the study argued the released time could still be redirected to direct patient care. The result is an economic argument as much as a labor one, and the cost case depends on what the freed minutes are used for.
Where a delivery robot lease fits a hospital unit
This is a documented real world deployment we analyze, not a Service Robot Co. client, and it took place in a Taiwanese ICU. The decision it captures is one US hospital and clinic operators face too: which transport runs to hand to robots, and how to fund them without tying up capital.
Service Robot Co. is a full service, OEM neutral commercial robot integrator for US businesses. We select the right robot across manufacturers, then lease, deploy, integrate, train and service every unit through a nationwide US engineer network, so one partner handles the whole lifecycle.
Our leasing runs on a three year lease with one fixed payment quoted after a site assessment, and that assessment maps the corridors and transport routes before any figure is set. Measuring your own routes first is the step that makes a study like this one useful to your operation.
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