​After restaurants and hotels now hospital has turned to AI robot nurse to serve the patients. A hospital in Thailand facing human resource scarcity has turned the adversity to opportunity by hiring robot nurses to fill the void.

The Mongkutwattana General Hospital in Bangkok can’t find enough qualified human staff to keep up with patients inflow. To serve the patient they have hired three robot nurses and even dressed them in the formal hospital’s yellow uniform.

The robot nurses are made by a Chinese tech start-up based in Shenzhen. These nurses have been named Nan, Nim, and Nee. Although they are complete robot but have been termed as AGV’s, short for Automated Guided Vehicles.

Functions

Their functionality is limited to dispensing of medication and make deliveries between the eight stations of the hospital. The robot nurse can even take the elevators by themselves and communicate in both Thai and Chinese. Settings of the robot can be adjusted via touchscreen.

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To avoid any collisions and untoward incident these AI robot nurse travel along a black magnetic tape on the floor and have sensors that make them stop if a person or object gets in the way. So far the robots have been clocking several miles a day around the hospital and that too without getting tired.

Benefits
The AI robot nurses have greatly sped up deliveries, reduces errors, and freed human employees for other manual tasks. They are proving invaluable for the hospital already. Hospital boss Dr. Riantong said ” These robotic nurses help to improve the efficiency and performance of working in the hospital. They are not being used to reduce the number of employees.

Since they are customisable, the hospital is looking forward to expand the robot nurses’ responsibilities by placing them in the pharmacy to prepare drug dosages. Help in the kitchen and laundry is also not ruled out.

AI robots are already doing wonders in healthcare industry e.g. Watson being used for detecting cancer and Mongkutwattana General Hospital is one of the examples of AI robots being used in healthcare. Robots these days are being used for making deliveries to performing surgery in hospitals all around the world. It is the need of hour due to rising costs, ageing populations, and workforce shortages, things like robot nurses Nim, Nam & Nee will soon become a necessity and integral part of healthcare service.

AI robots are the future, as they will not only take over many mundane functions but also add value in terms of time. They will enable humans to channelize their energy to more skilled activities which a machine cannot do as on date.