Medstor and the robots in new Automated CSSD

In what is a world first, Medstor will work in Copenhagen with Danish consulting company ALECTIA, equipping two automated warehouses, built to deliver sterile goods and services. The Central Sterile Services Department (CSSD) is an important part of any hospital, vital for efficient treatment and optimum patient safety. The Danish Capital Region is streamlining and upgrading these services by constructing two new CSSDs that will provide sterile instruments for the entire Capital Region. The new buildings, based at Rigshospitalet and Herlev-Gentofte Hospital, are scheduled for completion in 2018, and will set a new standard in the provision of CSSD services as almost all the heavy and repetitive work previously undertaken by staff will now be carried out by robots, mini Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) and conveyor systems, making the process safer and more efficient than ever before.

Where employees today must carry the instruments themselves, from 2018 robots in the new CSSDs will carry the instruments to a high-bay storage for sterile goods, with room for approximately 11,000 units, from where robots will again pick the goods that the hospitals in the cluster have ordered up. The goods will travel around the automated CSSD on a long conveyer belt system, which is where Medstor’s expertise in designing healthcare materials management systems will come into play. The conveyor belt on which the “transport boxes” travel will carry “transport boards”, which will in turn move the boxes and containers carrying the medical devices around the system. Medstor has been awarded the European contract to supply both the boards and the lidded boxes, and to carry out all design development and function testing of these completely new products, to be employed in a situation that is also new territory for all involved. Precise and exact manufacturing in the company’s UK factory will be essential to ensure compatibility with the conveyer belt and the entire system.