ABB Launches Collaborative Robots to Revolutionize Medical Labs

ABB is to introduce collaborative robots to medical laboratories as it opens a new healthcare hub at the Texas Medical Center (TMC) innovation campus in Houston, Texas.

The facility will be ABB’s first dedicated healthcare research centre when it opens in October 2019.

ABB’s research team will work on the TMC campus with medical staff, scientists and engineers to develop non-surgical medical robotics systems, including logistics and next-generation automated laboratory technologies.

Sami Atiya, President of ABB’s Robotics and Discrete Automation business said, “The next-generation laboratory processes developed in Houston will speed manual medical laboratory processes, reducing and eliminating bottlenecks in laboratory work and enhancing safety and consistency.

“This is especially applicable for new high-tech treatments, such as the cancer therapies pioneered at the Texas Medical Center, which today require manual and time-consuming test processes.”

Today, a limiting factor to the number of patients who can be treated is the need for highly skilled medical experts who spend a large part of their day doing repetitive and low value tasks, such as preparing slides and loading centrifuges.

Using robots to automate these tasks will enable medical professionals to focus on more highly skilled and productive work, while ultimately helping more people to receive treatment through dramatically speeding the testing process.

ABB has analysed a wide range of current manual medical laboratory processes and estimates that 50% more tests could be carried out every year using automation.

The market for non-surgical medical robots is estimated to reach nearly 60,000 by 2025 with the market almost quadrupling vs. 2018, according to an internal ABB research.

ABB’s collaborative robots, which already operate in food and beverage laboratories worldwide, are well suited to medical facilities as they don’t require safety fences to operate alongside people.

The robots will undertake a range of repetitive, delicate and time-consuming activities including dosing, mixing and pipetting tasks as well as sterile instrument kitting and centrifuge loading and unloading.

Houston is a focal point for medical technology research globally and the TMC innovation ecosystem is the ideal location for ABB’s new healthcare hub.

A 20-strong team from ABB Robotics will work in the new 5,300 sq ft (500m2) research facility, which includes an automation laboratory and robot training facilities, as well as meeting spaces for co-developing solutions with innovation partners.