ChristianaCare https://christianacare.org is piloting an innovative tool called Moxi, a collaborative robot or “cobot” that can be used inside the hospital. Moxi can make deliveries and perform other non-clinical tasks so that nurses and other clinical staff can spend more time caring for patients.
With a $1.5 million grant from the American Nurses Foundation https://nursingworld.org, ChristianaCare will deploy five Moxi robots at Christiana Hospital. Cobots are designed to share workspace and interact directly with people. In ChristianaCare’s pilot program, the Moxi cobots are intended to be integrated with the Cerner EHR platform and use AI to proactively identify when nurses will need equipment, supplies, medications, and lab tests without human involvement.
Examples include:
- Restocking basic patient supplies or delivering non-clinical items to patients based on ad hoc order requests
- Making rounds across units to deliver lab samples on collections completed directly in the EHR
- Making deliveries of pharmaceuticals not stocked on the floor
- Prioritizing tasks based on the nursing workload in a unit so that the busiest nurses will get help first
According to Eva Karp, DHA, RN-BC, Senior Vice President and Chief for Clinical and Patient Safety at Cerner, “Moxi could make a real difference in a nurse’s day by alleviating burnout and staffing shortages, which have become especially prevalent since the pandemic.”
According to Pam Owen MSN, RN-BC, Nurse Manager on one of the pilot units, “Moxi can work alongside nurses so we can spend more time working directly with patients, plus Moxi brings a smile to people’s faces.”