The requirements and applications of autonomous mobile robotics (AMR) in hospitals from the perspective of nursing officers

Background: In-patient care is currently under great pressure to change in all developed industrial nations. The aim is to professionalize patient-centered and care-related care more and to relieve the nursing staff of non-professional activities. In addition to the organizational and interdisciplinary focus, the use of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) in hospital is becoming increasingly important. Method: A multi-method approach by means of the semi-structured literature research, expert interviews and an online survey among nursing officers in Austrian hospitals and rehabilitation facilities (N = 144, n = 41, rr = 27.33%) were conducted to identify and prioritize current and future requirements, challenges and optional applications for the use of AMR in in-patient patient care. Results: It became clear that from the point of view of nursing officers, the focus is three-fold: relieving health professionals of non-nursing tasks; the technological and application-related maturity of AMR; the modular adaptation of hybrid AMR services to the existing structures and processes. Conclusions: As the Covid-19 pandemic experience has shown, in the future, it will be a matter of increasing the process-related and technological support for human-machine interaction with the aid of AMR to a value-adding level.