Growing with Technology Awards

Aethon, Inc.

Operational Excellence
Grand Prize Winner

URL: www.aethon.com
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Employees: 105 full-time
Executive Sponsor: Barry Skirble, CIO
Cisco Products: Cisco PIX 506E Firewall, Cisco ASA 5520, Cisco AP 1200 Access Points, Cisco CV21 PCMCIA Card

Improving the Quality of Healthcare—Automatically

These days, doctors and nurses need to be as efficient as possible. Every minute wasted is a minute that could be better spent elsewhere, giving patients the best possible care. That's why many healthcare facilities have discovered an innovative new approach to freeing up healthcare providers' time: robots. These robots don't take the place of doctors or nurses, but instead bring drugs, equipment, meals, and other healthcare necessities to doctors and nurses, anywhere in a facility.

Aethon, Inc., of Pittsburgh, Penn., is the leading manufacturer of these courier TUG mobile robots. "They deliver anything from Point A to Point B, or Point A to B to Z throughout the hospital," says Barry Skirble, Aethon's Chief Information Officer. Since these robots do mundane delivery chores, providers are free to spend more time with patients or perform other healthcare-related tasks. "This automated technology platform helps increase productivity and staff satisfaction, while saving hospitals time and money," says Skirble. "And the nice thing about the robot is, it doesn't take breaks, it doesn't stop to flirt with anybody, it doesn't mind waiting for an elevator. So, it does its job consistently. It doesn't matter if it's raining or snowing or whatever, it gets the work done."

The Robots Deliver

Each TUG mobile robot is housed where their application is, so, for example, a pharmacy robot is housed in the pharmacy area. To call for a drug delivery, a physician enters a request on a touch-screen monitor. A pharmacist sees the order at a corresponding touch-screen monitor in the pharmacy, fills the order, places it in the robot, and presses the destination location on the monitor and sends the robot on its way.

"The robot navigates the hallways, opens up automatic doors, communicates while it's moving, calls the elevator, gets on and off it, goes to the nursing unit, and communicates that its delivery has arrived," says Skirble.

A nurse then enters a five-character keypad number on the robot, removes the medication, closes the robot, and hits the "GO" button. The robot then travels to its next destination or back to the pharmacy, where it goes onto its charger automatically and waits for the next delivery.

The TUG robot was originally developed for pharmacy applications, but is now being used for a variety of deliveries, including meals, laundry, medical records, blood units, trash, dirty tray pickup, and even mail. "One nice thing about the robot is that the person who sets up the delivery and the person who's waiting for it can look on a monitor and see where the robot is at in the hospital at any given time," says Skirble. "And they use that feature a lot, especially if they're waiting for something important, such as blood or a fresh dose of medication."

Wireless Technology for Healthier Robots, and Healthier Finances

Inside the healthcare facility, all communication to and from each robot is made over a Cisco wireless network. Outside the facility, technicians at Aethon's Pittsburgh headquarters monitor all robots over a Cisco virtual private network, and can perform remote diagnostics, repairs, and software upgrades. "We want to have our customers be 99.99% productive with the robot," says Skirble. "So we can fix it here remotely from Pittsburgh, and the healthcare facility never even knows we do it. In fact, since the robot communicates with elevators, we often know if one is broken before the facility does!"

Finally, an added benefit of the robot is that its wireless network can also be used for tracking of assets and devices through RFID. This way, healthcare facilities don't need to add a dedicated asset tracking system, saving a great deal of money. "We place an antenna on our robot and give the hospital asset tags to put on their devices, including wheelchairs, IV pumps, beds, and other equipment," says Skirble. "As the robot navigates throughout the facility, it keeps track of all the assets and displays them. So we make this added service of remote monitoring affordable to our customers." By adding value through asset tracking, and freeing up healthcare providers' time, Aethon's robots are giving healthcare facilities the right prescription for improving care and lowering costs.