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(Diligent Robotics)
Founded in 2017 by University of Texas at Austin research scientist Andrea Thomaz and Vivian Chu, an alum of Google and IBM, Diligent Robotics aims to offload non-patient tasks from hospital workers.
It’s accomplished through Moxi, a robot that carries out key tasks around a hospital like delivering lab samples and picking up pharmacy prescriptions. Moxi is in hospitals across the country, seen in Dell Children's Medical Center.
Christy Warring, director of marketing and PR at Diligent Robotics, said that operation departments at hospitals have started reaching out with interest in having Moxi join the team. Previously, they had more commonly heard from the innovation department.
“It's like, hey, this used to be a really fun innovation project,” Warring said. “Now, it's like, we need you. This is something we have to have. So it's really moved from an innovation to a necessity in hospitals.”
While Moxi has an important role, the robot is undeniably cute, providing a warm expression resembling Eve from WALL-E. The team didn’t want to just make a box that carries items across the hospital, but a robot with a demeanor, an arm of sorts and a height around 4’11.
“They wanted to create a robot that felt like it belonged in your environment, but not something that would take over your environment right?” Warring said. “Moxi is never going to do patient care. So that was very deliberate.”
Of course, Moxie needs time to train just as anyone else doing the job. Over the course of six to 12 weeks, Moxi becomes skilled at maneuvering its way to an elevator, badging into rooms and learning its way around a hospital so that nurses can save themselves time.
“They understand that Moxi can come in here, and actually reduce those routine tasks so that you don't actually need your nurses to have to go deliver those lab samples or pick up those pharmacy prescriptions,” Laxmi Shetty, chief of people at Diligent Robotics said. “That's the importance of giving them that time back so that they can focus on patient care. And a lot of the time, that's what brings them joy— the impact that they're having on their patients.”
Moxi comes at a time when the stress of working in a hospital, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to burnout among nurses and staffing crises across the nation. So Diligent Robotics sees room for relieving hospital workers of some tasks.
“They're hearing their nurses, their clinical staff and what they're feeling and thinking about how do we supplement this? How do we support our team and support retention?” Shetty said. “Moxi is that solution.”
Going forward, the company is in “hyper-growth mode,” Shetty says. Earlier this year, Diligent Robotics received funding from Tiger Global and some other key investors for $30 million. With about 100 people at the company currently, Diligent Robotics is aiming to reach up to 200 by the end of the year and are hiring across all departments with some positions in Austin and in their other markets.
As they look to expand, Moxi continues bonding with patients and healthcare workers alike.
“I've heard several people say they'll walk by Moxi in the morning, ‘Good morning, Moxi’ like talking to the robot. Moxi is truly part of the team,” Warring said. “So I think it's been fun for Andrea and Vivian, just to watch their vision of having a robot interact with humans like actually come to life.”
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