ABB discusses the evolving role of robotics in healthcare

With each passing year, labor shortages and complexity increase for the healthcare industry. From pharmacies to hospitals, businesses are struggling to find and keep qualified workers. At the same time, advances in research mean that laboratory and medical procedures require greater speed and precision. ABB Robotics asserted this week that robotics and automation can help solve these problems. 

While there are many emerging industries for robotics, including food service and retail, healthcare is particularly promising, noted Jose Manual Collados, service robotics product line manager at ABB. 

“Some years ago, we already saw that we’ve been leading the revolution of logistics with the Amazons and online commerce. And today, logistics is the largest market for robotics,” he said during a MassRobotics webinar. “But there are new segments, and we believe that life sciences and healthcare is a new field for robotics.”

When ABB first started working with healthcare providers, the company already had years of experience with the pharmaceutical industry and medical device manufacturers, said Collados. However, it wanted to take a more structured approach.

So, ABB Robotics built a dedicated team to determine what the healthcare industry needed, what processes could be changed, and where it fit in.

“There are many opportunities. Of course, we are all aware of surgical robots, which are amazing technology,” Collados said. “But how, for ABB, for industrial companies, can we be relevant in this field?”

What is driving automation in the healthcare industry?

The healthcare industry encompasses more than hospital wards. It includes research, development, and production of pharmaceuticals, as well as medical device design and manufacturing, not to mention the supply chain that serves facilities, workers, and ultimately patients.

So, between all of these facets of the sector, there are many opportunities for robotics. Opportunity, however, isn’t enough to get robots out into the world. Collados also identified several drivers pushing the healthcare industry to consider automation. 

“We have an elderly population, we have the rising cost of healthcare, and we have more advanced healthcare, treatments, and personalized medicine. So, it’s getting more complex. There are more choices that we need to make to treat more patients,” Collados said. “At the same time, the technology is evolving.”

“There is a need and a willingness from healthcare service companies to find solutions. So we believe that if we work together and we really focus on these drivers, we will be able to have a better service for all of us. And there are opportunities to improve the system, we believe that robotics can be part of that solution,” Collados continued.

ABB aids in pharmaceutical research

Collados highlighted a few ABB use cases to showcase robotics potential in the industry. First, he looked at a recent project ABB completed with the Texas Medical Center, Texas Children’s Hospital, and Baylor University. At Texas Children’s Hospital, researchers study fruit flies, which share a great deal of DNA with humans. 

“Looking into fruit flies, we can understand the effect of different genes or how cerebral palsy can affect genetic diseases like Alzheimer’s or Huntington’s disease,” Collados said.

To keep these flies alive while studying them, researchers need to move them into new vials containing food every 30 days. A typical lab maintains around 20,000 vials, meaning researchers spend 20% of a workday “flipping flies” by placing a vial containing the fly stock over a vial with fresh food, and then tapping it to drop the flies.

ABB created an automated workstation featuring its dual-arm YuMi collaborative robot to flip these vials instead. 

“The challenge in that project was really that the equipment was not fit for automation,” said Collados. “So you need a robot that is able to sense and feel what it was touching, and we were able to do that.”

In another example, ABB helped Boston-based XtalPi build mobile manipulation workcells for its custom-built labs. XtalPi uses artificial intelligence to accelerate chemical research. In the past, it worked with Pfizer on the Paxlovid COVID-19 vaccine, among other projects.

“By using robots, automation, and the AI brain, it was able to reduce the time of the chemical stability test,” Collados said. “For this drug, it would normally take six months. They did it in two weeks.”

Robotics for pharmacy fulfillment

ABB also sees potential in using robots to speed up healthcare logistics. For example, the company has worked with the Seventh People’s Hospital in Shanghai, where its robots are helping to fill pharmacy orders.

“In China, there is a new regulation that is requiring the people working in the pharmacy to have university training, and there are issues in some hospitals,” Collados said.

This new regulation has resulted in a shortage of qualified pharmacy workers. Without workers to fill prescriptions, people who need medication could go without crucial care. 

“In this case, we are using the FlexBuffer storage and retrieval system, which is taking boxes outside of the storage system and in front of that robot that has item picker software,” Collados explained. “This is 3D vision combined with AI, and another IRB 2600 ABB robot is able to pick the right drug and separate the prescription for a certain patient.”

Robotics providers must comprehend healthcare constraints

While ABB sees a lot of potential for robotics in the healthcare industry, vendors need to understand its constraints, said Collados. 

“We believe that in order to be relevant in this industry, we need to be very much aware we are working in a very sensitive area,” he noted. “We need to have robots that have the right preparation, the right certification, and they need to be compatible with the environment.”

In addition, ABB understands that automation is still new to many healthcare workers. This means any technology that can make robots easier to use and understand, like AI, will be key to implementation. 

“We are coming into environments where it’s not an automotive factory that has 2,000 robots,” Collados said. “It’s a laboratory that will have one or two and maybe many different applications, and that job that the people are doing is not focused on the automation.”

Editor’s notes: John Bubnikovich, president of ABB Robotics, will be participating in a keynote panel on “Driving the Future of Robotics Innovation” at RoboBusiness 2024, which will be on Oct. 16 and 17 in Santa Clara, Calif.

RoboBusiness will be co-located with DeviceTalks West, which focuses on medical devices.

Applications are open for the third cohort of the Massrobotics Healthcare Robotics Catalyst until Nov. 1.

Register now.