Aug 27 2010
Aethon, the global supplier of automated mobile robots for various services in the health care industry, has declared the installation of the nation’s first fully automated robot called MedEx at the University of Maryland Medical centre.
This new robot acts as an advanced surveillance system, providing real time status of any medication delivery. MedEx enables the hospital’s pharmacists to monitor the delivery of medication items between all units in the hospital and can also track a particular product to determine its current location. By including this robot from Aethon, Maryland medical centre has become one of the first in the health care sector to incorporate automated delivery and tracking solutions.
MedEx is an advanced version of TUG, which was the previous robot developed by Aethon. With TUG, around 120 hospitals experience substantial benefits including tracing and distribution of hospital equipments, medications and meals, thereby ensuring improved safety and patient care.
According to Aldo Zini, Aethon’s President and Chief Executive Officer, with the help of MedEx’ effective tracking mechanism, hospital staff will feel comfortable in fulfilling the hospital regulations, removing manual errors in medication and ensuring better patient satisfaction. The robot has also reduced the requirement for maintaining printed copies of medication receipts. He also added that MedEx can easily track the lost medications, thereby significantly eliminating various losses inflicted by this crucial requirement.
Marc Summerfield, Director of Pharmacy at the Medical centre stated that MedEx has considerably reduced the huge clerical work done by the nursing staff and other technicians for maintaining reports and forms and this can effectively provide them with improved job satisfaction. By partnering with Aethon and Omnicell, Summerfield has decided to upgrade the existing MedEx by developing an interactive platform that helps the robot to automate the process of replenishing the cabinet stock to provide increased reliability.
MedEx can create an electronic receipt containing various details regarding the location, time and the person who is receiving or delivering the items. This is carried out by means of passive RFID technology (Radio Frequency Identification) and biometrics, which is incorporated in the TUG’s wheels.
Source: http://www.aethon.com