Robotics
Robot-transported parcel locker makes it easy for patients and carers to collect medical equipment at OUH
Previously, it could take patients from the H. C. Andersen Children's Hospital and the Department of Cardiology at Odense University Hospital (OUH) up to 30 minutes to collect medical equipment for their treatment programme. As a rule, the equipment had to be collected during outpatient clinic opening hours between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Many patients and carers have found it difficult to pick up equipment at a time which for most people is during working hours. Others have had to collect equipment in the evening after waiting in the paediatric emergency department among sick children and adolescents and their parents.
From 30 to 7 minutes
Previously, it took about 30 minutes to collect equipment, but the new mobile parcel locker has reduced this to just seven or eight minutes. Patients and relatives no longer have to walk to the outpatient clinic and wait to be serviced, and the newly-established short-term parking spaces close to the entrance also reduces time and hassle. In addition, patients and carers can pick up equipment in the lobby when it suits them.- The carers who have to pick up equipment for their children are pleased with the solution. For them, the parcel locker is a modern, timely solution that meets their needs and makes things easier for them, and the staff are pleased that the parents no longer have to sit with sick children and young people while waiting to take delivery of the equipment, says Marie Glent-Rolle, Innovation Consultant in Clinical Development at OUH.
The parcel locker is located in the lobby approximately 22 hours a day. At 8 a.m., it is transported from the lobby first to the Department of Cardiology and then to the Children's Hospital by the robot to be filled with, for example, measuring devices, plasters and disposable syringes. At 10 a.m., it is returned to the lobby, and a text message is sent to the patients and carers to notify them that they can pick up their parcel from the box within the next three days.
They also receive a link to Google Maps. When clicking on the link, they receive travel directions to the main entrance and the dedicated parking spaces. From there, it’s a 30-metre walk to the box, where they enter the PIN stated in the text. The door opens, they pick up their parcel, close the door and drive back home.
Patients have expressed great satisfaction with the parcel locker solution. This also applies to patients at the Department of Cardiology, which in the autumn of 2023 introduced a recorder (Pocket ECG) that records heart rhythm around the clock and tells you whether you have a heart rhythm disorder.
Until now, a secretary has spent a large part of their working day handing out the recorders, because patients and carers arrive at irregular intervals throughout the day to collect them.
- Now the same secretary can spend their day on coherent tasks instead, and being able to pick up the recorder from the parcel locker allows patients to get started on diagnostics and treatment faster, Marie Glent-Rolle explains.
Also, the department avoids having to send an employee over to the Information Centre to collect returned recorders. Instead, patients drop them off at the parcel lockers and they are transported back to the department.
Complex, multidisciplinary collaboration
The parcel locker itself is a relatively simple solution once the robotics are in place, but organisationally, introducing robotic solutions in a hospital is a complicated matter.There are many interfaces and implementing a technological solution in a hospital environment often requires complex, multidisciplinary collaboration. In addition to the two clinical departments that use the parcel locker, Clinical Development has also collaborated with, among others, Information, Cleaning, Logistics and Building Operations and Services.
The parcel locker must be cleaned and must not affect hygiene levels or logistical processes in hospitals. The robot needs to drive itself about without human intervention, infrastructure needs to be customised, which requires the involvement of Building Operations.
In addition to the two clinical departments, the project partners include the Centre for Innovative Medical Technology (CIMT), Nordic Robotics and Odense-based Mobile Industrial Robots (MiR). The Centre for Clinical Robotics (CCR) has been responsible for programming the robot and, in collaboration with Nordic Robotics, developing the frame of the parcel locker that allows the robot to move the locker around.