Transportation in Healthcare Industries

Healthcare industry comprises of preventive, remedial and therapeutic services such as doctors, nurses, hospitals and other private public and voluntary organizations which provides goods and services to treat patients with care. The transport of people and goods from one place to another cannot be avoided in a healthcare industry. The purpose of the transportation department is to ensure the safe and timely transportation of inpatients by cooperative effort between logistics management, the nursing units and the transporting personnel. Delivering excellent care to the patients is the first priority of every healthcare. The automating distribution of medication in the hospital or healthcare centres not only allows the right medication to reach the right individual at the right time, it also enables nurses and other skilled professionals to focus on direct patient care and not routine delivery tasks. There are many ways through which healthcare centres can automate all aspects of medication delivery enhancing patient and staff satisfaction.

Transportation is done in many ways in a healthcare industry. Some of them are mentioned below:

·         Autonomous Mobile Robot: The Autonomous Mobile Robot transports lab specimens, medications and hospital supplies, enabling staff to remain focused on patient-related tasks. The cost of labour decreases and overall turnaround times increases when more time is spent on the value-added tasks. An autonomous mobile robot delivers a simple and lean solution for the healthcare industry. Facility modification is not required for the autonomous mobile robot. It only needs power from a standard wall outlet to recharge. Its easy-to-program laser guidance system makes sure the healthcare robot safely navigates narrow hallways, tight quarters, and multiple floors. 

The staff of lab, pharmacy and other hospital can now spend far less time walking and waiting, because with the help of autonomous mobile robot specimens and tests can be analyzed sooner, ultimately enabling faster results and overall better patient care.

With the help of autonomous mobile robot there is no need for manual transport of laboratory specimens, medications, supplies and other materials, which allows healthcare technicians to focus on patient-related tasks.

·         Automated Guided Vehicle: Automated Guided Vehicles help healthcare centres and hospitals to take control of their on-demand and routine material transport activities. Self-guided vehicles helps staff to remain focused on patient-care activities instead of delivering materials, thereby improving quality of care and reducing operational costs.

Automated guided vehicle is designed to transport supplies, medication, linens, meals, and waste streams throughout the hospital efficiently. The vehicle usage and consistent delivery performance is optimized by software. As a result, hospitals can achieve leaner workflows, while reducing injury to personnel and damage to facilities.

·         Pneumatic Tube System: Pneumatic tube system is highly complex systems which perform a great variety of task and its means of transport combines speed and reliability in the hospital pneumatic tubing. The pneumatic tube system transports a multitude of small and medium-sized items. It doesn’t only save time, but also space: laboratories can be centralized and stocks in the decentralized medicine storage depots can be reduced.

The pneumatic tube system helps increase efficiency since the staff is no longer busy running errands, allowing the wards to stay occupied all the time.

These tubes don’t necessarily have to be installed at the outset of construction. Even in an already operating healthcare centre or hospital, a pneumatic tube system can be easily integrated. Depending on the various structural conditions, the system can be layered inside or outside the walls. Almost all the necessary equipments like medicine, laboratory samples, emergency samples, units of stored blood, x-rays, documents are transport by hospital pneumatic tube system. By doing so, the pneumatic tube system creates a direct connection between all hospitals wards, such as blood banks, out-patient departments, nursing wards and reception or administration offices.

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·         Electrical Track Vehicle: The Electrical Track Vehicle helps improve patient care by quickly and reliably transporting critical patient-care items between healthcare departments. This flexible and versatile transport solution can be mounted horizontally, vertically or overhead to fit in any building architecture design – adapting to a wide range of conditions and transport operations.

These vehicles are provided with electronic locks which prevent content tampering on the container lids during transport and optional swivel baskets keep liquids from spilling during transit. For bacteria free transport, the electric vehicle offers options of automatic UV and wet disinfection measures.

The electrical track vehicles are designed to handle payloads weighing less than 15 kg and are ideal for transporting blood samples, laboratory specimens, IV bags, medication, patient records and X-rays.

Packaging, Labelling and Documentation for Transport:

There is distinction of risks between infectious substances and diagnostic specimens; to avoid such distinction, there are variations of the packaging, labelling and documentation requirements. The current packaging requirements are described below:

Basic triplet packaging system: It is consist of three layers as follows:

·         Primary Receptacle

·         Secondary Receptacle

·         Outer Shipping Package

Requirement for infectious substances:

The basic triple packaging system is used with additional specification and labelling and documentation requirements. Infectious substances may only be transported in packaging which meets the specification and packaging instruction of UN.  The outer shipping package must bear the specification marking. Hand carriage of infectious substances is strictly prohibited by international air carriers, as is the use of diplomatic pouches for that purpose.

The maximum net quantity of infectious substances in an outer shipping package is limited to 50ml or 50g, if transport is done by passenger aircraft. Otherwise, the maximum quantity per package is 4L-4Kg for transport by cargo aircraft or other carriers.

Benefits of Medical Transportation:

Medical transportation services enable patients to reach their destination quickly and efficiently. While in journey, highly skilled drivers, emergency medical technicians and paramedics provide medical services that may be needed to ensure a safe arrival.

Non-emergency medical transportation services are scheduled in advance to transport the patient to and from appointments. Healthcare providers prefer these professional services because of the dependability and neutrality.