Diligent Droids, a company developing healthcare service robots, is partnering with Seton Healthcare to explore opportunities for robots to improve workflows on acute care units.
They are embarking on a 6-month study on three acute care units at Seton Medical Center and Dell Children’s Medical Center. The goal of the study is to identify specific tasks and activities on these units that can be handled by robots, freeing up nurses and clinical assistants to spend more time on clinical activities and patient care.
During each observation period (anywhere from 3 hours and up to an entire shift), an observer will shadow an individual RN or CA, and use a structured observation data sheet to note specific activities. For example, the observer may be asked to note each time the RN or CA fetches an item, where they fetch it from, where they take it to, and the amount of time it took to complete this activity. The specific nature of the observations may vary from week to week, as the goal is to understand a variety of non-clinical tasks that could be potentially offloaded on robots. Observers will debrief regularly with members of our research team to discuss any issues that come up with the observation and to help improve the observation protocol.
The weekly time commitment for an individual observer may vary across the two-month period, but will generally involve a minimum of 10 observation hours per week. Observations may include day and night shifts, and will typically last 2-3 hours (though a few shift-long observations may be needed). We are flexible, and happy to work with you to schedule observations at times that fit your schedule and availability. This is a paid position. For more information, please contact Agata Rozga at seton-study@diligentdroids.com.