By now, most people have heard of the concept of self-driving cars. That’s perhaps in the not-too-distant future. But in the nearer term, there very well could be self-driving hospitals beds.
Medical Xpress reports that a “Flexbed” is currently in the works by a team at the UTS Centre for Health Technologies in Australia, in partnership with Sweden’s KTH Royalty Institute of Technology. It’s reportedly the first robotic hospital bed and frame and could drastically alter patient transport within hospitals.
UTS was approached by the Stockholm institute with the idea, citing a need to curb repetitive strain injuries to hospital staff from the manual movement of heavy patients. The average patient is moved into or onto seven different types of bed, from ambulance to recovery, Medical Xpress notes:
“For hospital staff, the Flexbed reduces their RSI problems because the bed has its own driving capabilities and doesn’t need to pushed or pulled. Hospital staff can just lead it to where it needs to go,” said project lead, Ray Clout. “Staff also don’t need to lift patients, so again, those manual handling problems can be significantly reduced.”
The Flexbed comes with encoded driving wheels, WiFi control, laser sensors to avoid collision and a tracking camera. It also incorporates a hospital bed’s multiple movements, such as Trendelenburg, and others for surgery. The robotic hospital bed is assigned to an employee, who can control the bed with a smart phone app. The bed is built from MRI-friendly stainless steel. It also come with a specially designed mattress equipped with pressure sensors that monitor the patient’s body pressure while osculating air to relieve pressure, in an attempt to better treat bedsores.
A prototype is ready for commercialization and the Center for Health Technologies is looking for a company to license it, according to professor Hung Nguyen, director of the center.
“It’s also got a CPR mode, meaning it lowers itself and allows hospital staff to perform CPR – and all of which is controlled by an app,” Clout said. “Plus it’s traumatic for patients to move from bed to bed, so if they can stay on the one bed for their entire stay at the hospital that’s got to be a bonus.”
Current hospital beds that have basic functions like a button to raise or lower the patient typically cost $23,000. The Flexibed can be designed and built for the same price and include all the added abilities.
