Meet the robot at the Royal Surrey who can clean floors and sing
Her name is Ella and she works at the hopsital
Guildford's Royal Surrey has welcomed a new staff member named Ella but she is a bit different because she is a robot.
Ella is programmed to clean large floor areas, uses 70% less water with fewer chemicals than traditional cleaning methods and she can also sing Happy Birthday, tell a joke, rap or have a chat with you.
The hospital is one of the first NHS trusts to welcome a cleaning robot to their staff.
Medirest, the contractors who look after cleaning, waste, portering, catering and much more at Royal Surrey chose the Trust to trial their first UK cleaning robot just over a year ago and found that Ella improved quality, consistency of cleaning and received a positive reaction from staff.
Medirest’s Contract Director Gareth Donaldson says Ella is far from just a gimmick:
“This is the future and it’s all about releasing time to care for staff.
"Ella is making a huge difference to repetitive cleaning work, covering large areas of the Trust. The use of robotic cleaners is vital to help free up staff to focus on what’s important.
“Thanks to Ella, our team of cleaners have more time to concentrate on the critical ‘touch point’ hot spot areas for infection transmission, such as handrails, door handles, lifts and doors to wards. This is vitally important, especially during a pandemic.”
Ella is programmed with a GPS plan of the hospital and set areas to clean and after she is done she returns to base to clean herself and get ready for her next assignment.
Built in alert systems also help Ella to detect people approaching from behind and in front, allowing her to come to a halt if beds or trolleys need to move past.
Medirest is now investing in 12 cleaning robots among the Trusts they work with.
Jacqui Tingle, Director of Infection Prevention and Control at Royal Surrey, said:
“Ella is a valuable and welcome addition to support our Medirest housekeeping team who all work incredibly hard to keep the Trust spotlessly clean and safe for patients and staff.
"We always aim for extremely high standards of cleanliness at all times and robotic technology is an important element in continually achieving this across a large site.”
Staff from the cleaning team who ‘supervise’ Ella, monitoring her progress and making sure she doesn’t get stuck in corners, say that patient feedback has been enthusiastic. "