How can hospitals evaluate indoor delivery robots?
Start with logistics fit, then assess clinical boundaries, infection prevention, elevators, privacy, emergency response, and staff workflows.
Short answer
What to know
Hospitals should select a specific nonclinical logistics workflow, then assess its route, handoff, cleaning, access, privacy, emergency, and clinical-operations impact with the relevant teams. A robot’s ability to carry an item does not establish that it is appropriate for a particular care area or regulated material.
Choose the workflow with clinical owners
Specify what moves, where it starts and ends, whether the contents are time-sensitive or access-restricted, and who accepts custody. Involve nursing, materials management, pharmacy or laboratory leadership where relevant, infection prevention, facilities, IT, and security before selecting a route. Exclude sensitive workflows until governance and controls are clear.
Observe corridors, patient transport, cleaning schedules, elevator peaks, and badge-controlled boundaries. A corridor route that is technically navigable can still disrupt care, create noise, or compete with clinical movement. Set measurable workflow goals—such as handoff reliability or staff time saved—before the pilot so the hospital can decide whether to continue.
Control access, cleanliness, and failure
Define cleaning responsibility, materials, frequency, and what happens after a spill or contact with a contaminated area. Confirm whether the robot records video, audio, location, or identifiers and where that data is processed and retained. The institution should complete its own privacy and security review rather than relying on a vendor summary.
Build failure scenarios into the pilot: elevator unavailable, item misrouted, door access denied, alarm, network outage, or clinical area closure. Establish a human fallback and prohibit the robot from blocking emergency routes. Run a controlled trial with staff training, incident reporting, and a scheduled review before extending the route or carrying a different class of material.
Put it into practice
A site-planning checklist
- Named workflow and clinical sponsor
- Route walk with frontline staff
- Cleaning and item-custody plan
- Privacy and cybersecurity review
- Human fallback and controlled pilot measures
Further reading
Primary references
- ISO — ISO 3691-4:2020
International safety requirements and verification for driverless industrial trucks and their systems; confirm current editions and scope before use.
- VDA — VDA 5050
Interface specification for communication between mobile robots and a master control system; it does not certify a building or robot.
- U.S. Access Board — ADA Standards
U.S. accessibility standards reference; local applicability and project review still matter.