HUTCHINSON, Minn. — Hutchinson Health Hospital has a unique employee helping out staff. Spencer, the lab and supplies delivering robot, has been on the team for six years and has never taken a day off.
"He's here 365, 24/7," senior lab manager Laura Templin-Howk said.
Templin-Howk was the biggest advocate for the hospital getting Spencer to help lighten the load.
"Staffing can be a big challenge, and transporting specimens is not the best use of our time," she said.
Before Spencer arrived, staff would take a up to eight hours a day hand delivering labs and specimens.
"It would probably take us five to ten minutes to head up to our lab department, so that's critical and crucial time that I appreciate having at the bedside with my oncology patients," said Hutchinson Health nurse Kristi Hanson.
Relay Robotics is the company who makes these robots that are in hospitals, hotels, and office buildings.
"Functionally, it's like an Uber so the lab technician or the nursing staff can call the robot, and the robot will come over and then they can send it on its way," says Relay Robotics CEO Wade Pfeiffer.
Relay Robotics has designed Spencer, which uses AI to navigate, to know how to enter and use elevators, glide down hospital corridors without bumping into people or objects, and return to a docking station when not in use.
Templin-Howk said Spencer has helped Hutchinson Health see a higher retention rate among its lab techs, many of which have been there for seven-plus years.
"Our patients see him, they love him, they call him by name, and he's been a vital part to connecting our interdisciplinary units at our hospital," Nurse Hanson said.