First fully digital hospital opens in Canada
The Humber River Hospital in Toronto, Canada, is the first digital hospital to open which uses automated robots to complete a number of different tasks, such as delivering medical supplies and food, to preparing and administering drugs. The delivery robots can pick up boxes, call an elevator for itself, then deliver items to different areas around the hospital, before returning to get more boxes for another round. The drug administering robot works in collaboration with the doctors. Once the robot receives an order of drugs from a doctor for a chemotherapy patient, the robot will check the drugs against the patient's medical records. The drugs are then mixed and sent up to the patient in a chemotherapy bag, with a printed ID barcode on it that matches a barcode worn by the patient on their medical wristband to prevent the drugs being given to anyone else. Robots are also being used in the radiology suite of the hospital. The robots move around the patient during the scanning process, rather than the patient having to move into various positions to get the best image.

A robot prepares chemotherapy medication. Screenshot/ CTV News

Patients stepping through the doors of Humber River Hospital in Toronto, Canada will not only interact with health professionals, but automated robots that are programmed to complete a variety of tasks.

Touting itself as the first fully digital hospital, Humber River Hospital opened its doors to the public this week. Its automated robots are being used for everything from delivering medical supplies and food to patients, to preparing and administering chemotherapy drugs.

The robots moving medical supplies are designed to pick up carts, call an elevator, and deliver them to the appropriate place. They will then go back to their base to continue making rounds.

"When you're talking about a building at 1.8-million square feet, and we have to get supplies up 13 floors, you need to start looking for ways to do that other than people pushing carts of supplies," Humber River Hospital CEO Barb Collins told CTV News.

The robots assisting with delivering chemotherapy medication will receive an order of the drugs that need to be mixed as the physician enters it into the chart. The robots will then check the dose and the patient's previous medical doses before mixing the drugs.

The benefit of having robots deliver chemotherapy drugs instead of humans is that the medication is "quite toxic," meaning that if they were ever accidentally spilled, entire chemotherapy areas sometimes had to be shut down to protect the staff, Collins said in the video.

"This will not happen because it's all internal, it's mixed properly, checks the dose, checks the weight of the patient, and then actually delivers out a complete bag of product for that patient," she said.

The chemotherapy bags are printed with the same barcode worn on the intended patient's medical wristband to ensure the drugs are administered to the right person.

There are also robots in the radiology suite that will move around the patient to take scans, rather than making the patient contort their body into difficult positions.

All rooms in the hospital have a touchpad system where patients can access their electronic health record, order food, Skype, and either read books or have them read aloud.

"I never could have dreamed of it 40 years ago when I got into nursing," Collins said of the hospital's innovative technology.