New robot can transport hospital beds for cleaning
In a hospital, all beds must be cleaned in a central cleaning facility. This means that the staff at Odense University Hospital walk many kilometres a day to move empty beds around. The entrepreneurs behind Essential Robotics have taken the first steps towards developing a robot that can perform this task.
Three engineers are in the process of developing a robot that can move empty beds, which may save healthcare staff a huge number of steps.
The entrepreneurs behind Essential Robotics, together with the CCR research and innovation centre and other departments at Odense University Hospital, have been working on a robot that can move beds from one place to another.
The project is important because of the significant distances of the buildings of the New OUH – the super hospital in Southern Denmark – which staff and patients will be occupying in a few years.
The hospital’s service assistants may end up having to walk up to 100 kilometres a day with empty beds that need to be cleaned.
Successful collaboration between entrepreneurs and OUH
Entrepreneurs Rasmus Junge, Emil Månsson and Anton Jørgensen greatly appreciate the collaboration with the hospital in the phase where they have investigated what the robot can do.
- We’ve enjoyed a very successful collaboration with OUH. Once the next prototype of the robot is ready, we hope that we can also test it at OUH. In the long term, our market is the whole of Europe, and to make our product profitable, we will be reaching out to a number of hospitals. But before that, we must, among other things, obtain a CE marking, explains Emil Månsson, a robotics graduate from SDU.
According to Malte Kongsted Deleuran, innovation consultant at OUH, the robot has great potential to solve an extensive logistics task.
- It can potentially help free up manpower for more patient-related tasks, such as caring for patients. As a hospital, we are committed to co-developing and identifying medtech solutions that help us utilise our workforce more efficiently, he explains.
New prototype in the pipeline
The entrepreneurs behind Essential Robotics have been part of SDU Startup Station, and the company is currently located at Forskerparken, Odense. But they still clearly remember their early days in the entrepreneurial environment.
- We really just wanted to start working on the technology, but we were wisely advised to start with the users. So we interviewed nurses and porters and quickly discovered that the problem of empty beds was far bigger than we thought. It all kicked off from there, says CTO Rasmus Junge, who also studied robotics at SDU.
In the long term, it will also be possible to move other things with the robot. They have found out that there are many items in transit in a hospital, but right now it’s all about the beds.
- The experience from OUH has given us valuable insight into the technical conditions we must take into account when the robot is to be rolled out in hospitals. We are now applying this knowledge to shape our next prototype,’ says Rasmus Junge.
Partners & funding
- Essential Robotics and the Logistics Department, Department of Neurology N and OUH’s Cleaning and Hospital Service.
- The CCR unit is responsible for project management and coordination, administration and reporting, as well as the general support of activities in projects.
- The project has received funding from OUH’s Innovation Fund, while Essential Robotics has received support from Innovation Fund Denmark’s ‘Innofounder’ programme.