Fujita Health University and Kawasaki Collaborate on Smart Hospital with Service Robots

Fujita Health University, and its associated hospital, are located in Toyoake City, Aichi Prefecture, southeast of Nagoya City. Fujita Health University Hospital is one of the largest hospitals in Japan with 40 clinical departments, an average of 3,200 outpatients per day, 1,376 inpatient beds, and 13,500 surgeries per year.

It is here that Fujita Health University and Kawasaki are jointly conducting demonstration tests of the “Near-Future Mobility Service Robot for Healthcare Operations.” The Phase 3 demonstration test began in August 2022. The Prototype 03 service robot developed for this phase is expected to be the model that will be introduced to the market, possibly already within Japanese fiscal year 2022 (FY2022; April 2022-March 2023).

Demonstration testing has been carried out in Phases 1 to 3. In each phase, the team developed hypotheses related to the challenges underlying the needs of healthcare professionals and reconciled the technical requirements with these hypotheses. The robot and the operating applications necessary for the demonstration testing were then prototyped and subject to demonstration tests to further identify the hurdles and functional requirements.

[Phase 1 October 2021]

Phase 1 identified hurdles in sample delivery encountered by the Prototype 01 service robot. It was tested whether this robot could take test specimens from staff stations in two wards on one floor, transport them to the laboratory on another floor using the elevator, and return to the staff stations. The robot developed was square, four-wheeled, and box-shaped with a display monitor on the front that shows facial expressions and information.

According to project member Atsushi Ogura, deputy general manager of Kawasaki’s Global Marketing & Sales Department, the service robot was originally conceptualized to solve the “last mile problem” faced by the logistics industry due to labor shortages.

In Phase 1, the tests found three hurdles needing to be cleared:

[Phase 2 February 2022]

In Phase 2, the team deployed the dual-armed Prototype 02 service robot to test specimen retrieval and other functions, taking into account the challenges observed in Phase 1 demonstration testing.

Prototype 02 was set up to travel to and from staff stations in six wards across three floors and the laboratory, and to use its own arm to tap the IC card required for operating the elevator. The tests also included opening and closing the sliding doors of the treatment rooms in the buildings, taking pictures of patients without opening the curtains, and sending the pictures to the staff station.

One of the purposes of using Prototype 02, which has two arms and a display monitor that turns into a face, was to study how humans and a robot can communicate in healthcare settings. The test studied how facial expressions should be displayed, how the arms can be used to perform a range of transporting tasks, and how to conduct remote communication effectively.

Like General Manager Ogura, Yusuke Kinugawa is a member of this project. He is an assistant manager in the Advanced Smart Mobility Supervisory Department’s System Development Department, which is in charge of developing the robot system. He explains that using Prototype 02 in Phase 2 revealed three more hurdles needing to be cleared:

[Phase 3 August 2022]

In Phase 3, the team developed and introduced a “nearly complete” service robot, taking stock of the two previous demonstration tests. The third prototype is box-shaped, similar to Prototype 01, measuring approximately 55 centimeters in both width and depth, and 140 centimeters in height.

Prototype 03 incorporates the following technologies:

Now these technologies are undergoing detailed final-stage verifications.

Koichi Seto, project manager at Fujita Health University and head of the center for co-innovation, states that the dramatic progress made in Phase 3, which paved the way for commercial production, is due to Kawasaki’s outstanding ability to identify hurdles:

Service robots designed for healthcare operations are a key component of “smart hospitals.” Fujita Health University is making advanced efforts to build a smart hospital and has set targets in Fujita VISION 2030, which it announced in FY2022.

A smart hospital is one of the management strategies demanded of medical institutions, says Seto. For example, while electronic medical records and other uses of IT have become widespread, they are far from perfect in terms of streamlining the operations of healthcare workers, ensuring convenience for patients visiting the hospital, improving healthcare quality, and linking medical data and systems.

According to Seto, firstly, a smart hospital aims to improve and streamline healthcare operations. Secondly, it aims to achieve digital transformation (DX), including linking various types of data, with the objective of providing extensive high-quality medical services.

For example, DX of medical data envisions creating a uniform information infrastructure that covers health checkups to treatments, medications, and dietary habits.

A big driver of the shift toward smart hospitals is the work-style reform for healthcare workers. From 2024, overtime hours will be capped, requiring phased improvements in the management of working conditions. Depending on the situation, Japan is also forecast to face a shortage of 200,000 nurses by 2025.^*1

The automation of operations, or the introduction of robots, is expected to make a significant contribution to improving and streamlining healthcare operations in smart hospitals. The automation of testing work is gradually progressing, thanks to initiatives like the introduction of Kawasaki’s automated robotic PCR testing system. However, the task of transporting things, which is being studied in this project, is an area that has remained unaddressed.

Especially in large hospitals, inpatient testing and intravenous drug administration requires a tremendous amount of in-hospital logistics, including transporting specimens and picking up medication. Most of this work is currently done by nurses and assistants. If the work is simply transporting, does it have to be done by humans?

As the demonstration testing in Phases 1 to 3 has shown, a hospital environment can vary more than most people imagine. The bed configuration may change depending on the patient’s condition, or emergency equipment may be brought in, leaving no open space. Crowds of healthcare staff may block a robot’s field of vision. Nothing remains the same for even a moment. Humans adapt flexibly to all of these changes in their environment.

Existing service robots, however, do not yet have the technology to respond flexibly and agilely in an environment of constant change. Like industrial robots, service robots are adept at carrying things to the correct predetermined location, provided that the environment is not changing.

The latest demonstration testing of Prototype 03 has shown that it is ready for market launch. Kinugawa explains why this is highly significant:

Robots will not take over all human work. That said, there are still many areas that can be robotized. In order to reduce the workload of pharmacists and reduce dispensing errors, for example, Fujita Health University is preparing a system that uses electronic medical record data and Kawasaki’s robotic arm to pick up cancer drugs from the shelf and dispense them.

Seto describes the future of healthcare as one where staff and robots work side by side and serve patients together.

General Manager Ogura of Kawasaki is also focusing on using robots as solutions.

Robots back up healthcare staff and give them more time to focus on patients. It surely won’t be long before various healthcare needs and aspirations are firmly supported by robots.