Robotics for aged care

Giving care time back to residents

In most aged care homes, healthcare assistants spend a surprising share of each shift walking. Meals go from the kitchen to the dining room and to residents eating in their rooms, trays come back, and continence products, linen and stores have to be fetched from a storeroom at the other end of the building. None of this needs a caregiver’s training, yet it often falls to them because nobody else is on the floor.

Robots suit these trips. While staff stay in the dining room helping residents eat, a delivery robot can take plated meals to a wing kitchenette. A transport robot can take supplies to each wing on a schedule, and an autonomous cleaner can do the corridors and lounges at times that fit residents’ routines. Each trip saves only a little, but across a day the time adds up, and it goes back to residents. Robot trays that carry meals become part of the cleaning routines in your food control plan, like any other serving equipment.

Designing around dignity, dementia and the Code of Rights

An aged care home is someone’s home, and robots have to be introduced with that in mind. Under the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights, residents have the right to privacy and to services that respect their dignity and independence. Robots should not wander into bedrooms, film residents or turn a meal into a production line. For a resident living with dementia, a moving machine can be engaging at one moment and distressing at the next.

We plan the introduction with your clinical, activities and hospitality services teams. Usually that means starting in common areas, keeping speeds low and sounds gentle, and taking care around secure dementia and psychogeriatric units. Staff should have clear authority to take a robot out of an area if a resident is unsettled. Whānau often have questions too, so it helps to brief them before the robot appears.

Certification, levels of care and where robotics fits

Aged residential care in New Zealand covers rest home, hospital, secure dementia and psychogeriatric care, and providers are certified by HealthCERT against Ngā Paerewa NZS 8134:2021. Robotics won’t meet any of those obligations by itself, though it can take routine work off care staff so more of their time goes to residents. Introducing robots is also a change that affects workers, so under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 your staff should be involved before the first robot arrives. Every engagement starts with a consultation and site assessment, followed by a written proposal. Robotx supplies, deploys, trains and supports; your staff remain responsible for care.