Bruyere's new robotic patient transfer solution

Bruyère hospitals are leaders in research and innovation and now, new ‘robotic’ technology will be rolling through the halls and under the patients who require help moving from their bed.

Many front-line health-care workers are faced with the reality that it is always busy. Every patient and every minute matters. At Bruyère's Saint Vincent Hospital, a complex care institute, one of the challenges faced by staff has to do with moving patients from bed to bed.

"It can take anywhere from two to four people to transfer a patient … so they [staff] have to wait for somebody else to be freed up at the bedside to be able to come into the room to transfer," says Paula Doering, vice president of clinical programs and chief nursing executive with Bruyère. "I hate to say it, but transferring can cause some shearing of skin because our patients are very fragile their skin is like tissue paper."

However, a new solution is now within the hospital walls. It’s called the ALTA platform, created by Able Innovations. Once it rolls up beside a standard hospital bed, all it takes is the push of a button to move patients off the mattress.

"It’s automated patient transfer technology that allows one nurse to move a patient who is immobile," says Jayiesh Singh, Able Innovations CEO. "There is a compact conveyor belt platform that extends out, it pushes down on the mattress and it knows what type of mattress it is and then rolls under the patient and then shuttles them over and all of this is done in a way that sensors are monitoring everything."

Singh has been working closely with Bruyère to develop and test this technology over the last four years.

"Bruyère hospital has been the ideal partner and we brought in a few funders to help this initiative, including AGE-WELL and Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization, and together this collaboration allowed us to really iterate the design process so that it really made sense for the front line staff to use," says Singh. "Nothing like this has existed before and focusing on using technology to alleviate the burdens of the front line staff is something that is entirely new."

The ALTA platform has passed its testing phase and Saint Vincent Hospital will be the first institute to begin using the units regularity. Within the next six to nine months, they will have four units, one for each floor.

"It will allow our patients to be safely transferred with a hands-off approach, and that means our staff will not sustain injuries and not have the wear and tear on their back," says Doering. "Staff can use it independently when they’re ready to transfer and when the patient is ready to transfer and now can be spending more time with the patient at the bedside."