AUTOMATED AID
New robotics facility opens in Med Center with aim to do doctors’ tedious lab work
Four robots worked silently in a lab at the Texas Medical Center Innovation Institute, with the whirring of mechanical arms overpowered by the chatter of their human onlookers.
The first robot cut open and emptied plastic bags containing vials that would typically hold research specimens such as blood, urine and other liquids. The second robot scanned a barcode to learn what was inside the vials and then sorted the specimen into batches. The third robot loaded the batches into a centrifuge, which spins the specimen to separate its contents, and the fourth robot removed liquid from one vial and placed it into another, a process used to prepare medicine or perform diagnostics.
The demonstration illustrated how the Swiss company ABB Robotics and Discrete Automation sees the future of health care — a future it’s pursuing in Houston with a new research and development facility that opened Wednesday.
“We at ABB believe we can bring a lot of value to (the health care) industry by providing technology that supports taking away dull and repetitive work,” said Sami Atiya, president of ABB Robotics ad Discrete Automation.
The goal is to free physicians and researchers to spend more time with patients and perform other higher-level tasks. The global market for non-surgical medical robots is expected to grow to nearly 60,000 by 2025, a fourfold increase from 2018, according to
internal ABB research.
In Houston, ABB plans to hire up to 20 research engineers who will interact with hospital employees, lab technicians, academics, medical device innovators, startup founders and others to learn more about the industry’s challenges and how these could be solved through robotics.
Its location on the Texas Medical Center’s Innovation Institute campus could also allow the TMCx accelerator program to start accepting and mentoring robotics startups. TMCx focuses on medical device and digital health startups.
“Health care is probably the one vertical that is in greatest need of more technology,” said Texas Medical Center President and CEO Bill McKeon. “We have many inefficient processes.”
ABB Robotics and Discrete Automation, a division of the technology giant ABB, delivered the world’s first microcomputer controlled industrial robot in 1974. After gaining traction in the automobile industry, ABB Robotics expanded to other industries, including electronics and food and beverage service.
In health care, it will use sensors to adapt industrial robots to work in close quarters with lab technicians and researchers. These sensors prompt the robot to slow down and ultimately stop when a human approaches.
ABB Robotics has also developed a collaborative robot, YuMi, that’s designed to work alongside humans. These robots have soft padding, stop when touched and lack pinch points that could crush fingers.
The four robots demonstrated in the lab were stationary, but ABB also unveiled a mobile YuMi robot that will be able to sense and navigate its way around human co-workers.
To demonstrate its skills, this robot cut the ribbon that officially welcomed ABB’s research hub to Houston. It was the Texas Medical Center’s first robot ribbon cutting.
“I think there are going to be a lot of firsts here in robotics and health care,” McKeon said.