Robots Carry Weight - and Blood Components - at Centers

By Elissa Fuchs, AABB Staff Writer

Tug makes his way across the halls of the University of California-San Francisco Hospital easily, transporting blood for transfusions. He quickly goes up and down elevators and through doorways with his products safely guarded. When he reaches his destination, he drops off the contents and heads back to the laboratory to wait for his next assignment…Tug is not your traditional blood banking employee. For one, he is not exactly a person. He is actually a member of the robot species.

“The robot fills in the gaps at our center because we have a very busy service and don’t have pneumatic tubes to all locations” Delene Johnson, former BCP employee and current Transfusion Service Supervisor at UCSF, said. “It takes the burden off our staff, especially at night and on the weekends, when there are not as many employees here.”...

At Johnson’s facility, the laboratory staff load Tug with blood products, select a preprogrammed destination on a computer touch screen, and press the robot’s green “go” button. Just like that, the machine is on its way to a medical wing of the hospital. When it reaches its destination, the robot verbally announces its arrival, at which point personnel must enter an electronic code to unlock the cart cabinet and access the contents. As with accepting components from a human deliverer, staffers must sign to confirm the blood products were received; the robot then returns the signed document to the laboratory…

Even though each robot came with a $25,000 price tag, Gifford Lum, MD, the blood bank director at the Boston VA, insisted that they are very cost-effective, saving the facility money on personnel time. Lum and San Francisco’s Johnson agree that the robots are easy to use, and Lum is encouraging health care workers in nearby facilities to adopt this product.

“We’ve really had a good experience with the robots,” he said. “They never tire or call in sick.”

Robots’ Other Applications

Facilities are branching out and using robots for other aspects of blood banking and transfusion medicine besides carrying components. In Korea, for example, scientists at the Pohang University of Science and Technology developed a robot that could perform almost 100 different types of tests on blood. In the U.K., a robot known as the “Bloodbot” has been designed to draw blood samples from humans, although it is still in the experimental stages.

Three robots are being used to sort blood samples at the Red Cross Plasma Sample Management Facility in Birmingham, Alabama…

“Using a robot has definite advantages. Its benefits include reducing human handling of potentially hazardous specimens, improving productivity and eliminating mistakes,” said Cynthia McCrorie, director of plasma sample management at the Red Cross. “It takes the human error part out of the equation. The repetitive nature of manual sorting would be pretty overwhelming for a person.”

This article was excerpted from AABB News.

Image from Boxed Thrills.

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