Analysis of automated guided vehicle use in health care by simulation: A case study in a university hospital

Abstract

Automated guided vehicles (AGV), which are frequently used to reduce the workload of employees in production systems, are now being used in service systems. AGV has been widely used in the field of healthcare and is well suited to transporting. This study aims to provide AGV is being used in different areas of healthcare today within the scope of Industry 4.0. In recent years, the use of AGV has started to increase to reduce the workload and contamination risk of healthcare workers. In this study, it was aimed that AGVs would distribute autonomous drugs by processing patient information such as age, drug type, frequency of use and so forth. The information obtained from the internal diseases department of a university hospital was transferred to a computer simulation environment and the current situation and the proposed situation were analyzed separately, and the results were compared. The statistically verified results show that an autonomous AGV that will process patient information and distribute drugs reduced the workload of nurses by 14% in approximately a month.