ChristianaCare Rolls Out 'Cobots' to Help Nurses with Nonclinical Tasks

ChristianaCare this week announced some new help to augment its workforce: robotic assistants that can help nurses and other hospital staff spend more time with patients by automatic certain time-intensive tasks. The technology, called Moxi, is a collaborative robot that can work alongside nurses and interact with them directly, performing nonclinical tasks such as deliveries and pickups to enable them to focus on care delivery. ChristianaCare purchased five of these 300-pound "cobots" – which can work 22-hour shifts, be fully charged in two hours and carry up to 70 pounds – with a $1.5 million grant from the American Nurses Foundation.

"When the Moxi cobots are fully integrated, we anticipate that they will complete up to 200 delivery tasks a day," said Katherine Collard, RN-BC, chief nursing informatics officer at ChristianaCare, in a statement. "Moxi will be doing those hunting and gathering tasks such as getting equipment and supplies, which nurses are doing today but don't need to be doing." Earlier this spring, a startling report showed that as many as 90% of nurses were considering leaving the healthcare profession within the next year. The poll showed nurses naming administrative burden and manual tasks among key causes of their burnout.