Purpose. The feasibility of a robotic courier
medication delivery system in a hospital
setting was evaluated.
Summary. Robotic couriers are selfguiding,
self-propelling robots that navigate
hallways and elevators to pull an
attached or integrated cart to a desired
destination. A robotic courier medication
delivery system was pilot tested in two
patient care units at a 471-bed tertiary care
academic medical center. Average transit
for the existing manual medication delivery
system hourly hospitalwide deliveries was
32.6 minutes. Of this, 32.3% was spent at
the patient care unit and 67.7% was spent
pushing the cart or waiting at an elevator.
The robotic courier medication delivery
system traveled as fast as 1.65 ft/sec
(52% speed of the manual system) in the
absence of barriers but moved at an average
rate of 0.84 ft/sec (26% speed of the
manual system) during the study, primarily
due to hallway obstacles. The robotic