(104) Robots and Intelligent Medical Devices in the Intensive Care Unit

Introduction: As Robotics is a key enabling technology, we examine its potential for Critical Care. While robotics may not fully replace human interactions in care, we identify areas where it might contribute, by examining the use of state-of-the art and future robotics in the ICU, including its economic impact.

Methods: The state of the art in robotics applicable in the ICU is surveyed, including process and nursing support, transportation, monitoring and treatment applications. Tasks amenable to robotics are identified, their acceptability to patients and caregivers are examined and their quantitative contribution to future management of an intensive care unit is studied. Data on personnel activities, equipment usage and cost are collected during one year of a large teaching ICU in Basel, Switzerland, with 2,318 cases treated for an mean duration of 33 hours at average costs of 6670 USD per case.

Results: The leading nurse tasks (72% of ICU budget) that can benefit are (costs, savings in USD): non-contact patient supervision (2100k, 1050k), medication preparation (1364k, 682k), blood test handling (688.5k, 787), moving the patient in bed (1990k, 360k). From total nursing costs of 15,464k USD, 2940k USD can be saved by robotics.
Mature robotics support technologies for use in the ICU also include: mobile service robots for courier tasks, cleaning robots and automated drug dispensing units,
Transportation of 112317 items was done, of which 70914 items were brought from the storage to the bed. Using courier robots can save 41,403 min translating to additional savings 140143 CHF.

Conclusions: Robots may contribute cost-effectively to the ICU, in particular by supporting patient supervision, medicine preparation and test handling as well as transportation, courier tasks and cleaning support/infection prevention.
Key for emerging robotics is the development of Artificial Intelligence-enhanced Clinical Treatment Systems, integrated with existing Clinical Information Systems.
Direct patient handling by robots is immature and will require more R/D.