Discover how autonomous robots are revolutionizing hospital operations through the lens of groundbreaking innovation leadership. Andrea Thomaz shares insights on scaling AI robotics from concept to daily clinical reality, including lessons learned from deploying Moxi across major hospital systems nationwide.
Andrea Thomaz, CEO and Co-Founder, Diligent Robotics
Megan Antonelli, Chief Executive Officer, HealthIMPACT Live
Welcome 0:01 Welcome to Digital Health talks. Each week we meet with healthcare leaders making an immeasurable difference in equity, access and quality. Hear about what tech is worth investing in and what isn't. As we focus on the innovations that deliver. Join Megan Antonelli, Janae sharp and Shahid Shah for a weekly no BS, deep dive on what's really making an impact in healthcare.
Megan Antonelli 0:29 Hi everyone. Welcome to Digital Health talks. This is Megan Antonelli, and today I am so excited to be joined by Andrea Tomas. She is the CEO and co founder of diligent robotics, they are transforming hospital operations through AI robotic assistance. You may be familiar with their robots. They're called Moxie as one of the few female founders in robotics, Andrea has led her team to a remarkable milestone that we're going to talk about today that is changing how we think about clinical workflow automation. Hi, Andrea, how are you?
Andrea Thomaz 1:05 Hi, thanks for having me. This is a great
Megan Antonelli 1:08 I am so excited to have you. I mean, we had Aaron, Mary at health impact in June, and I was literally at a conference this week where they were talking about the robots, talking about how she had nurses. Joyce Leto at Kaiser was talking about how she had nurses at one health system who want them at her health system. So I am just, you know, it couldn't be more timely, and it couldn't be more exciting to hear, you know, your founders story, and you know, kind of how you got, got to hear, so tell us a little bit about it.
Andrea Thomaz 1:38 Yeah, very exciting. I loved hearing that story and just, you know, we've, we've come, we've come so far that you've really were at a meeting and heard about Moxie the Yeah, I'd love to tell my story. I, you know, so I did not come up in healthcare. I was, I did, I'm a roboticist, and did my PhD at MIT and robotics some time ago, and was a professor in robotics, and working on my passion has always been robots that work side by side with people. So human robot interaction was my research area. And I started the company with my, one of my PhD students, vivid and Chu, our CTO and co founder, and we were really passionate about finding a finding a market and a need where, you know, robots could really join a team of people and augment that team with automation. So we were pretty passionate about the fact that, you know, we don't necessarily a lot of places where you're going to find robots being really valuable. They're not necessarily going to take over a whole job, but they're going to add a lot of value to a team of people. And as soon as we started looking into healthcare, it was very apparent that this is exactly the problems that a lot of hospitals were having, that they had clinical teams that were not necessarily always doing patient care, not necessarily always doing their clinical work. Sometimes, you know, they were fetching and gathering things. And so, you know, we look at this and we're like, oh my gosh, we can build robots for this. This is, this is a perfect application of, you know, people plus robots. So we started the company in 2018 and did a lot of product discovery. We embedded ourselves with nursing teams across Texas. We're based in Austin, and, you know, asked people, what would you have this robot do? And why? And why are you having to go from this place to that place? And but we were ready with a product in 2020 and we actually joined the Cedar Sinai accelerator program. And 20, the end of 2020, and coming into 2021, we launched it at Cedars Sinai with our, you know, they were first, they were our first robots as a service customer. And we've been scaling in market and really excited to see the product market fit. Really, we've seen a lot of different organizations of different shapes and sizes, like small rural hospitals to like large academic medical centers. Everybody has this problem of, you know, people having to hand carry stuff in the hospital. So it's been really satisfying and exciting to see the product market fit that we're that we're seeing, or we're going to be close to, we have close to 100 robots now. By the end of this year, it'll be over 100 robots live across 24 health systems and working 24/7 supporting those teams. So been exciting.
Megan Antonelli 4:34 Yeah, that's amazing. And it's such, I mean, it's such an amazing story in that also the timing of it really must have been a bit, a bit Kismet in just the pandemic and where, you know the need and also the acceptance, right? So this, this whole, you know, with the adoption and proliferation of AI and the interest of this, but then, of course, the resource challenges. But before we get into all of that. I'm just imagining you as a robot, roboticist at MIT. You know, we like to talk about female founder stories, and, of course, your co founders, with with Vivian, tell me a little bit about, you know, what it was like. I while your timing was perfect, I'm sure it wasn't all easy. So as a woman getting into this business saying, I've got a robot for you in healthcare. Tell us a little bit about that and about the challenges, you know, whether it was, yeah, you know, as a woman or not, but you know sort of what, what you faced, and you know some of the words of wisdom you might have come
Andrea Thomaz 5:39 Yeah. I mean, I think definitely, as a you know, woman robotics roboticist have always been a bit of a bit in the minority. But I also think there's something about that that that truly helped us in the early days. And like I said, we embedded ourselves with nursing teams. Who are, you know, 90% women. And so I can only imagine that if we were a couple of dudes that were like, Hey, let us come and hang out with with you guys, I'm not sure that would have gone over as well. And so, you know, I think we were really, we were really able to connect to the end users. And I also think that our approach is very user centric. Like we are always asking, you know, how can we build robots to more seamlessly fit to into the human workflow, not the other way around? Like, I'm not just saying, here's this robot we built. Why don't you figure out how to use it? So I think that's that empathy is,
Megan Antonelli 6:46 I love that, not to say that that would uniquely women, woman, more I hear it and I get it for sure, and and I imagine, and that's a great point in terms of being a, you know, sort of woman founded business with a with a product that, you know, I'm sure there was some, you know, scum, skepticism, when you were doing that research. Tell me a little bit about, you know, you could have gone in anywhere. You know, they need robots everywhere. What about healthcare? Made it like, you know, this is the place,
Andrea Thomaz 7:17 yeah, you know, I was a professor at UT Austin at the time, and we were thinking about starting the company, and, you know, honestly, to leave that kind of a role, I wanted to go and, you know, vivid, and also we wanted to be doing something that was truly impactful. And there's a lot of different places where you could imagine a service team of people and robots joining the team. But when we started looking at hospitals and healthcare, you just saw the you saw the you saw the clinical teams and the frontline teams. And there is this when you when you put, when you dug into, like, Hey, why are you running around? Why are you going to do this? And it was like, well, because if I don't do it, my patient's not going to get their thing that they need. And like, I'm the last line of defense for this patient. And so that's like, why I'm going out of my way to take this lab sample or to go get this medication, because if I wait around for somebody else to bring it, then my my patients in pain or and so we just got so inspired by those What better end users to be developing technology for than these passionate, caring people, right?
Megan Antonelli 8:26 Yeah, so many, you know, opportunities for efficiency, but also impact, right? In terms of the value you can provide, even if it is, you know, moving one thing to another place, you know, but in a hospital that's, as you know, big and has tons of moving parts and lots of things needed on on different floors and different places, you know, so totally it makes absolute sense. And then again, of course, the timing of all of that, tell me a little bit about, you know, we know it has been in these health systems. What is the impact they're seeing? Where is, you know, where is the place that Moxie is providing that value for our folks that don't know about it? Yeah, tell us a little bit about moxie's Day, a day in the life of Moxie.
Andrea Thomaz 9:10 Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we do. So Moxie does like point to point transport tasks, is what we call it. But I think that the we've been able to identify and help hospitals understand. You know, when they a lot like you said, a lot of things have to be moving around hospitals to support patient care, and all aspects of patient care, from lab samples to medications to supplies to equipment. And you know, most there's a lot of things that there's already a process in place for how that moves around. But then there's, you know, all these things that kind of fall through the cracks, like there's these ad hoc, like things that come up and in a day and in the life of the hospital, there's any number of ad hoc deliveries and transport tasks. That have to be done by a person for some reason, that has to happen. And so we help hospitals identify, hey, where are your staff having to run around? And let's make sure that your staff aren't running around, but a robot's running around instead. And you know what you know today, and the the places where Moxie is working that's primarily delivering medications between Pharmacy Departments and nursing units, or delivering lab samples between, you know, a nursing unit where the lab samples being taken and it gets taken to the lab, or from the from the emergency department going to the lab. Or central supply. There's a lot of things that central supply and materials management. It's like stocking onto nursing units. There's a supply room, but then there's a handful of things that you might need on a nursing unit that aren't stocked in your supply room. And so then somebody has to go and bring that from central supply up to you. So those are the kind of Greatest Hits, I would say, of the Moxie robot fleet. And, you know, then there's, there's all kinds of creative ways that people think of, like, well, you know, what about having Moxie? Bring this, like, these things, documentation from radiology, like, I could stick that in Moxie, can't I? And you go, yeah, if you have something that needs to go from one place to another, we can make it happen, so,
Megan Antonelli 11:21 right? And so, and you were saying it's like, it has a locked sort of box in it that uses the badge scan to kind of get through. So the things that are in it are secure and being brought. And they're being brought, you know, often in elevators, right? And in terms of, like, tell me a little bit, I know there's a recent milestone of 100,000 you know, rides and that, you know, that tells us a lot about kind of the adoption. But I'd also like, you know, tell me a little bit about kind of that infrastructure that, you know, it's, you know, how does it operate, where does it live, and all of that. But I also want to hear about them,
Andrea Thomaz 11:53 yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, a big part of what we had to do to really enable these transport tasks to happen hospital wide is develop a general purpose capability of being able to navigate the hospital. And I think, you know, when you first think about like going and navigating the hospital, you think of that being primarily a Mobile Task, like, Oh, I could just have a robot with wheels and a container of and be able to get from point A to point B in the hospital. And it's mostly transport. Is mostly about moving on wheels. And what you find as soon as you start saying, like, oh, I need to go from the pharmacy up to nursing unit on the fourth floor, well, you're going to leave pharmacy, you're gonna have to open a door, and then you're gonna maybe have to open another door before you get to an elevator that you have to push some buttons to get on the elevator. You have to push some buttons to decide what floor you're going on. You have to get off the elevator and then probably open another door to get to the nursing unit on the fourth floor. So there's all of these manipulations that we have to do with the arm, that if we want the robot to interact with existing infrastructure, and that's kind of the biggest that's the biggest new thing that we brought to market is this general purpose capability to interact with existing infrastructure. Because previously, there are kind of products that are on market in the market for hospitals to do transport tasks for years. But in order to make those robots work, you have to install something, a control box in your elevator so the robots can talk directly to the elevator without pushing buttons. And same goes for any door that the robot might need to open. You'd have to install something so the robot can talk to that door via Bluetooth or Wi Fi or something like that. So we are more generally available to hospitals that don't have that infrastructure, and they want robots to just be able to interact with their existing infrastructure so, but it's very hard. This is, like, a hard mobile manipulation problem, like moving around and,
Megan Antonelli 14:09 yeah, I mean tying a button. I'm a human being, and I have, like, walked through a health system and been like, Are you kidding me? Like, if I were sick, how could I ever navigate this place? You know, you're going to some trans and you're going over the sky bridge, and then you've got to, you know, and then, oh, this, this door needs a badge, but this doesn't need a badge. And, I mean, it is, I say, Oh, that is, I haven't thought about that, but that's amazing in that you've built it to to be able to navigate that fairly complicated maze of, you know, hospitals are like this building's built on to this building and built on to this building, right? So,
Andrea Thomaz 14:49 yeah, there's definitely some Frankenstein hospitals out there. So that's, I think, what we think the significance for us of the 100,000 autonomous elevator rides. Is and counting. Now it's more than that, but is it's really that we've gone from something that is kind of research, that you might be able to take a video of this robot doing this thing and post it on the internet to No, no. This is happening every single day, every single task. And it's it's it's really productized, and it's ready for, ready for scale, right, right for prime time.
Megan Antonelli 15:26 That's amazing. Well, in that and in getting to this point, there must have been some challenges, you know, I'm sure, you know, it wasn't easy. So tell us a little bit about, you know, kind of both in the design, you know, maybe a little bit more about kind of the design factors that that were the big challenges. And we can talk a little bit more about kind of working alongside you talked, you know, that this is about a, you know, as a companion tool to the humans and the clinicians working in the space. So tell us a little bit about those challenges too.
Andrea Thomaz 16:02 Yeah. I mean, so, like, my background is in human robot interaction, but the only like human robot interaction that I'd ever really studied was in the lab, right? We would invite people in to interact with our robots and have them do experiments. So it's been fascinating to have the actual, like real world, put a robot into an environment, 24/7 and what do people do with it? And, you know, they dress it up for Christmas, and they dress this up for Halloween. And we just had something today, you know, there's, there's a robot at a hospital, and the remote team is like, this robot's neck keeps throwing errors, like, what's going on? And this is very unusual, we just calibrate. It's like, there's nothing that, like, says that this should be happening. Somebody sends us a picture of the robots, and somebody had, like, dressed them up and put tinsel around their necks. It's like, okay, so the robots can't move their necks because people are putting tinsel around. Like, we had to call the husband be like, can you undress the Moxie robots, and then they can get back to work. So I think those are the things that have been fascinating and that we've learned to learn to, you know, see what people are going to do with robots in their environment, and it's led to some really interesting ways that we are kind of making a making the robots behavior it's kind of seamlessly fit in with people. So, you know, one example we've we've got the robot makes more responses to people than it used to because we had and when we first started deploying, you know, the robots, a transport robot, it's it's on the job. It's not really talking to people, it's not doing things. But, you know, people were very excited to have this robot in their environment. And so we had to add ways that the robots like, even when they're, like, cruising down the hallway. If there's somebody that says, Hello, then you know, we need to respond to that, and so, so that was kind of fun to to put some of those little extra things that just sort of get people excited about being having a robot in their space,
Megan Antonelli 18:14 right? Well, and that's, you know, as you talk about, kind of the staff and the resources and obviously coming out of the pandemic, and where, you know, the the needs and the nursing shortages that were faced, you know, so to have that, that helper was, you know, sort of where they were more welcoming than they might have been five years ago, which is hard to believe it was five years ago. Another thing that Joyce mentioned at the meeting the other day. But what I was struck by that Joyce had said was, you know, that the the nurses at one place liked it so much that they, you know, she now needed to look at it, you know, here, and I, I sort of live in this space where folks are so competitive around you. Well, if they're doing it here, it's the shiny object. We just have to do it, you know, but to have staff tell you, I want this technology here, like, you know, usually they're like, No, yeah, we don't want your technology. We're good, yeah. So tell me a little bit about, I mean, obviously, because you're coming at it from that human side of things. But what's that, you know? What have you seen? And I imagine it was a journey. I mean in terms of the acceptance and adoption, what has come? Come from that, and what have you learned from that?
Andrea Thomaz 19:32 Yeah, it has been really interesting. Like I said, we went our first deployments were in late 2020, early 2021, so that was a time when people were, you know, really feeling workforce shortage, like acutely, really feeling burnout and stress from the pandemic, and really feeling like, oh my gosh, we have to do something to support our teams. And so I. Yeah, I think before that, like in 2018 2019 when we first starting the company and talking to people about robots to support their teams, it was, you know, we were always getting, we were always getting introduced to, like, an innovation team or a strategic team who's thinking about the hospital of the future. This was thought of as like, Oh, this is something that's like, many, many years away. Like, go talk to those people that are thinking about our hospital building that we're going to build in five years. And then, you know, suddenly during the pandemic, it became top of mind for everyone, like, Oh, these things have to exist. And we need these things to exist sooner, because I need to support my clinical teams and I don't want people running around if they could be with patients. And so we, we pretty immediately got into thinking with real operational leaders who are truly like, I need to think about robotics, and I need to think about automation. So that was the first shift that we saw like during the pandemic, and then the shift with AI has been fascinating, because I think that's more been from the end users have now really said, Oh, well, obviously robots exist because, you know, chat, GPT, like, I think you've gotten this like, expectation that, like, well, of course, of course, This is where we're at versus, I think in 2021 and 2022 people are, like, a robot is going to work with me. That's amazing. And they were very excited about it, but they was like, Whoa, this is i This is not what I was expecting. But
Megan Antonelli 21:36 now they actually be able to summarize Catcher in the Rye.
Andrea Thomaz 21:39 Oh, yeah, exactly. So we've kind of like swung all the way in the other direction. Sorry for us. We saw that kind of adoption, like we saw one adoption flip at the kind of like organizational level, and that, like operational leaders saying, Wow, I need to find something. And you guys seem like you're furthest along in this. And then at the end users. It's been a little more recent where people are like, well, you know, why wouldn't I we working with a robot and so, but then to your to your point about the nurses really liking it, or the pharmacists really liking it, that we found has everything to do with the workflow design and the change management in the hospital. So you look at, what were they doing before? Where are the pain points? And how can we truly make sure that we're adding automation in a way that's reducing those pain points? And you know, nine times out of 10, it's the nurses who are running around, gathering things, and so those are the people who love Moxie the most. Because we, you know, one of the metrics that we even track for some of our hospital leaders, because they love reporting it out to their staff, is the number of steps saved, you know. So we've saved, you know, 25,000 steps this week for this month. And so, you know, that's, it's concrete. It's like people really get like, yeah, I really have to run around, I mean,
Megan Antonelli 23:04 and that translates so much into time and obviously burnout and stress and all of that so that, coupled with all of that, that's amazing, as you look and think about, you know, kind of what's next for that, you know, sort of the next in the evolution of human robot collaboration, you know, right now, it's transport. Are you guys, you know, where are you looking to next in terms of what, what Moxie can do?
Andrea Thomaz 23:28 Yeah, so I think we're just scratching the surface of the kinds of I do think there's still a ton of just logistics support for hospitals that more and more sophisticated robots could help with and so, you know, we have a fleet of 100 robots. Those robots are collecting data about how they operate, getting more and more sophisticated in our AI models that are powering those robots. So what I mean, I think we're going to start seeing is more dexterous manipulation. So today we are opening doors and taking elevators, but there's a lot of other things that we can be doing in the environment with more sophisticated manipulation skills. And I think we're excited to you'll see that come down the line. And you know, I think there's a lot of support to be to be provided.
Megan Antonelli 24:24 So when you do talk to the occasional hospital who isn't saying, Yes, get me one right now, what is your, you know? What is your advice? What is the, what is the kind of reason that they should invest and invite Moxie into the into the hospital?
Andrea Thomaz 24:44 Yeah, so I so I think that most hospital leaders can look at their organization and say how they I think everyone wants to do more with less, because they can't find enough people. And so I think I. A lot of times we're helping hospital leaders say like, where is it that your staff are wasting their time on things that a robot could be doing? And a big part of our process when we're starting to engage with a new client is workflow design. So we come in and we do a site assessment, and we talk to a number of the stakeholders across the whole facility, and we start to understand, like, Okay, where are the operational challenges? Like, maybe pharmacy doesn't think there's any challenge with medication delivery because nurses are doing all the running. Or it could be the opposite, like nursing thinks, oh, medication delivery is fine, and it's because the pharmacy techs are doing all the running, and so you figure out where the pain points are, and then you kind of just redesign workflows around that, and and it's a process. And you know, we have now, you know, a lot of different examples from a lot of different organizations that have kind of successfully made that transition. And I think that's what's getting that's making it easier for like, a health system who's skeptical, it's usually because they're like, I don't even understand how we would do this. And so what we've found is really helpful, is kind of taking them through some of examples of from our current customer base, and say, well, here's what this facility did, and they had a challenge, you know, similar to what you're talking about, and like, let us show you what before and after looks like.
Megan Antonelli 26:27 Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think there's so much in terms of with, you know, with technology, where we have the tech and we bring it in. I mean, just like you said, with the robots, here's the robot. Let you see what you can do with it, you know, and where you're going in really and saving, you know, there's, there's inefficient things happening in your hospital right now. This can help, right and, you know, find the inefficiencies. You know, we always talk, we like, get rid of the stupid stuff, the program they started in Hawaii, you know, around HR stuff. But it just, it resonates in healthcare. And it seems like, you know, with this, where there's a lot of time wasted, that you're able to really come in and, you know, there's infinite possibilities in terms of improvements. So that's great, as you look in our last few minutes. Tell me a little bit we like to always focus on the positive. What's coming, what's next. Tell us a little bit about, you know, what you're most excited about, you know, both in robotics and healthcare and AI and sort of human centered design, and the human companion, or, you know, could be anything,
Andrea Thomaz 27:27 yeah, absolutely. Well, I am excited about the the speed with which we're seeing AI impact lots of different markets, but we're on the cusp of seeing that, truly have become major changes in robotics and the capabilities that robots are able to have, and we're at the forefront of that, and I'm very excited to see that start to have real impacts in a real environment. So I would say next generation AI capabilities for robotics, especially robots that have arms like that, I think is going to be a super exciting thing to watch and see, and have a front row seat to
Megan Antonelli 28:11 Maxi always be the name. Will we go to Maxi? What's? What's,
Andrea Thomaz 28:16 I think that was sort of my next thing is, I, you know, we are very excited to scale this, like first product that we have doing ad hoc point to point deliveries, but we have a number of product adjacencies that have already been identified around, you know, larger load transport or more, many more dexterous manipulation that's needed. And so, you know, I think we're looking toward, we're looking forward to, kind of expanding the product roadmap. Yeah, is it what's her voice? Is it a girl or a woman or a man? Or is it just so we've, we've, we try hard not to gender Moxie. It's whatever you whatever you want it to be. And but the voice the voice lines do tend to sound a little more female. It's hard to have a gender neutral voice line,
Megan Antonelli 29:08 right, right? Well, that's that's great, and I it is. It's so exciting. And I'm excited to see you know everything that you you guys do, and see it roll out in more hospitals, and tell our folks on on the line, how to get in touch with you, and if they want to learn more.
Andrea Thomaz 29:28 Yeah, absolutely. You can definitely find us on LinkedIn. So please connect and reach out. You can also go to our website. We can book a demo. We would love to show you Moxie and tell you, tell you more about it and how it could impact your health or health healthcare organization. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. Andrea, I could talk to you all day. I'm so fascinated by this technology, and think there's just so much possibility. So thanks for joining me today. Awesome. Thanks for having me
Megan Antonelli 29:57 absolutely and thank you. Everyone for joining us. This is such an exciting topic, and you know only only the beginning of all of this. Andrea's work demonstrates that the future of clinical operations and in is not just about technology, but empowering the healthcare workers to focus on what matters most for more groundbreaking healthcare innovations. Tune in to health health impact and digital health talks until next time, keep pushing boundaries in healthcare. This is Megan Antonelli signing off.
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