TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa Bay 28 is meeting the newest member of the care team at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital.
Turbo Teddy, an autonomous robot dog, was designed to deliver medications to Children's Day Hospital located inside St. Joseph's Children's Hospital.
WATCH: Tampa Bay 28 meets Turbo Teddy
The robot can navigate busy hallways and call an elevator.
He delivers medications for children to the nursing staff.
"It was not just innovation. It was operationally needed, again, to keep those humans doing those humans tasks that need to be done and bringing in the robot that can do those small tasks running back-and-forth," said Danielle Nelski, nurse manager of Children's Day Hospital.
The robot starts at the pharmacy in the main hospital and then delivers the medicines to Children's Day Hospital.
Previously, staff would have to make multiple trips to deliver the medications.
"The pharmacy has to send a person to bring those medications to us since they can’t go through the tube system, so often times they would wait until the medications were in a batch, bring them up, so some of the patients were waiting a little bit longer for their medications to actually be delivered," said Nelski.
Staff may now focus on other important tasks instead of making multiple trips.
"The nursing team is able to stay with the patient and no one has to run back and forth for those medications anymore," said Nelski.
Turbo Teddy delivers medications like chemotherapy that cannot go through the internal tube system.
"A lot of these medications cannot be sent through the tube system because they cannot be shaken up, so chemotherapy, medications for our neurology patient such as IVIG," said Nelski.
David Fink, a former patient, came up with the idea for Turbo Teddy. David received treatment for Crohn's disease at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital for more than a decade.
His family made a donation to bring the technology to the hospital.
"Turbo Teddy is named after our patient's beloved family dog who passed away and he wanted to honor him in a special way, and so when he made the donation to our hospital for Turbo Teddy, we decided to name and make the look of the robot look like his family dog," said Nelski.
Turbo Teddy will soon make deliveries to other parts of the hospital including the pediatric ICU, the pediatric cardiac ICU and the pediatric infusion center.
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