Trinity Health St. Joseph Mercy Oakland Deploys Autonomous Robot to Assist Staff, Elevate Quality of Care for Patients
July 13, 2022Contact:
Trinity Health St. Joseph Mercy Oakland Deploys A utonomous
Robot to Assist Staff, Elevate Quality of Care for Patients
PONTIAC, Mich. (July 14, 2022) - Trinity Health St. Joseph Mercy Oakland has deployed two autonomous robots to patient units to support clinical care teams and elevate the quality of care for patients.
The robotic technology, which goes by the name of “Moxi,” is manufactured by Diligent Robotics. Moxi will complete time-consuming tasks that would otherwise be required of nurses and support staff, thereby freeing them to spend more time at the patient bedside. Trinity Health St. Joseph Mercy Oakland is the first hospital in Michigan to utilize Moxi’s services.
"The deployment of Moxi is one of many measures we have taken recently to improve patient care and offer greater support to clinical teams working inside our hospital,” said Doug Dascenzo, chief nursing officer at Trinity Health Oakland and regional chief nursing officer of Trinity Health Michigan. “By taking some of the responsibility off the shoulders of our nurses and support staff, we can redirect their time and energy towards comforting and supporting patients in their recovery.”
Nursing colleagues and support staff work long hours and spend a significant amount of time retrieving supplies needed to support patient care. Moxi saves the care team time by performing many of these tasks and by delivering items directly where they’re needed. Specifically, Moxi is designed to autonomously retrieve and deliver patient supplies, personal care items, equipment, blood and blood products, and medications to clinical teams.
"What we have seen is that nurses, especially during the pandemic, are working long hours and can spend an astonishing 30% of their time fetching and gathering supplies,” said Dr. Andrea Thomaz, co-founder of Diligent Robotics. “That’s a lot of time spent away from patients, so we designed Moxi to be the perfect teammate for nurses and healthcare workers. Having Moxi fetch and deliver items from point A to point B keeps the staff from having to worry about it. We want Moxi to be a capable, useful teammate that supports, not replaces, valued nurses and hospital staff.”
Patients and the community can learn more about Moxi by visiting https://www.stjoeshealth.orgdiligentrobots.com.
About Trinity Health
Trinity Health is a health care organization serving seven counties in southeast Michigan including Livingston, Washtenaw, Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Jackson, and Lenawee. It includes 548-bed Trinity Health St. Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor, 497-bed Trinity Health St. Joseph Mercy Oakland in Pontiac, 304-bed Trinity Health St. Mary Mercy Livonia, 66-bed Trinity Health St. Joseph Mercy Livingston in Howell, and 133-bed Chelsea Hospital. Combined, the five hospitals are licensed for 1,548 beds, have five outpatient health centers, six urgent care facilities, more than 25 specialty centers, employ more than 15,300 individuals and have a medical staff of nearly 2,700 physicians. Trinity Health has annual operating revenues of about $2 billion and returns about $115 million to its communities annually through charity care and community benefit programs.