KUKA robots sort up to 3,000 blood samples per day

Aalborg University Hospital is the largest hospital in the North Jutland region of Denmark. Up to 3,000 blood samples arrive here in the lab every day. They must be tested and sorted – a time-consuming and monotonous process which was done manually until now. The university hospital has now automated the procedure: a robot-based system and intelligent transport boxes ensure the quality of the samples – and show how workflows in hospitals can be simplified by automation.

Reducing workload on employees

Up to 3,000 blood samples are delivered to the lab in Aalborg University Hospital every day and need to be presorted in accordance with the requested test. This task is monotonous on the one hand, and requires particular care on the other. In order to free up lab technicians from this work, the hospital set itself the goal of automating the sorting process for blood samples. Two local companies were involved in achieving this: LT Automation A/S designed and implemented the robotic solution. The software developer Intelligent Systems A/S developed the software that monitors the temperature of the blood samples during transportation.

Optimizing workflows

The previous manual process was as follows: the lab staff opened the transport boxes on arrival, removed the blood samples and sorted them for further clinical analysis.
Because of the large number of boxes, the hospital employees often suffered from tendon and muscle injuries as a result of the repetitive work. “We wanted to automate this process to ease the burden on our employees,” explains Annebirthe Bo Hansen, Department Head at Aalborg University Hospital. “Furthermore, we were looking for a solution to improve monitoring of the quality and temperature of the blood samples.”