Hancock Regional Hospital has a new delivery robot. Can it help reduce staff workloads?

Delivery robots, similar to ones you might have seen taking food around town, are making their way into hospitals. Instead of burritos, these robots can help transfer medicine, IV bags and patient samples.

Hancock Regional Hospital in Greenfield has unveiled a robot of its own, which they hope will reduce staff workloads.

In a brief demonstration, the robot struggled to remove a container that hospital staff had left in a safe storage unit.

The robot was eventually able to take the container on a ten-minute ride across the hospital.

Hancock Health President and CEO Steve Long said the two-year pilot program is in its early stage, but says one day robots like these will do the jobs of hospital staff.

“I mean, it's 10 minutes to get there back,” Long said. “A person could walk there in two, but the fact is that this doesn't need a person on either end, right? So it can eliminate the person that has to be in that process.”

Long is also eying Indiana’s demographic changes. He worries that in the future, the state will face an older population and struggle to find people who want to work in healthcare.

Robots, Long said, could help fill that gap.

“I look at this and I say the day is coming where we will have too many patients for the staff that we have and that we can get,” he said. “So how do we embrace AI and the autonomous movement of things? This is it.”

The robot is part of a pilot program with the Indiana-based company Arrive AI. The robot and the two docking units placed in the hospital, where items are delivered, are owned by Arrive AI.

The hospital pays a monthly subscription fee to operate the robot. According to Hancock officials, that contract comes out to about $90,000 a year.

What sets the Arrive AI system apart from other hospital delivery robot systems is the secure docking stations where containers can be delivered. Officials with Arrive say normally robots are left to wait around until items can be removed.

At the Hancock Regional Hospital, Arrive AI’s system allows the robot to drop off items between two points in the hospital and continue moving back and forth as more items need to be delivered.

CEO Steve Long said he hopes to eventually have different docking stations across Hancock Health locations that could be serviced by robots, or even drones, that move between them.

“We're at the very beginning,” Long said. “So the immediate impact? Not huge. Long term impact? Enormous.”

Contact Health Reporter Benjamin Thorp at bthorp@wfyi.org.