whirrwork
🌐 Traduction automatique. L'anglais est la source et peut être plus précis. Lire en anglais →

Robot ou humain ?

Hospital deliveries

Porter / orderly making runs vs Autonomous hospital delivery robot (TUG-class)

Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits. Méthodologie · Bilan des prévisions

Humain · Par an255 923 $USPorter runs
Robot · Par an151 985 $USLease delivery robots
Délai de retour sur investissement3 mois
Année de basculedéjàBase-case year (earliest to latest across scenarios)

On these numbers the robot option is clearly cheaper.

États-Unis · USD · BLS OEWS May 2025 national medians by SOC occupation

Faites vos propres calculs

Change anything. Results update as you type and stay in your browser; nothing is stored or sent. Works offline after your first visit.

Charge de travail
Hypothèse

Deliveries per day (meds, linens, specimens, meals).

Hypothèse

Operating hours per day.

Hypothèse

Every day.

Hypothèse

Months per year.

Personnel
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

BLS OEWS May 2025 national median hourly wage, SOC 31-1132.

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Wages and salaries were 70.0% of total employer compensation cost for private industry workers in June 2026 (ECEC), so total cost = wage / 0.70.

ilostat.ilo.org

Nominal 4.4% a year, 2015-2025 (ILOSTAT hourly earnings).

Hypothèse

Deliveries per porter-hour including waiting for lifts.

Robot
Hypothèse

Robot deliveries per hour relative to a porter (slower, but no breaks).

Calculé Becker's Hospital Review via Aethon

Midpoint of $75,000-$140,000 purchase prices reported in 2015.

Calculé The Wall Street Journal via Aethon

Midpoint of $1,500-$2,000/month lease reported in 2014-2015. Old figures: ask for a current quote.

Hypothèse

Lift and door interfaces, Wi-Fi survey, charging bays. Often the hardest part in older buildings.

Hypothèse

Yearly service contract share of price (owned).

Hypothèse

Useful life in years.

Hypothèse

Availability after charging.

Hypothèse

Runs lost to faults.

Hypothèse

Deliveries that stay human: STAT runs, patient-facing handovers, odd items.

Hypothèse

Staff minutes per robot-hour loading and unloading (beyond what a porter run also needs).

Hypothèse

kWh per robot-hour.

Hypothèse

Electricity price per kWh (USD). Check your bill; energy is rarely a big line.

Finances
Hypothèse

Annual financing / discount rate. Nobody publishes yours; 8% is a round mid-2026 commercial borrowing guess.

Hypothèse

Years in the NPV comparison.

Hypothèse

Share of a human service price that is labour (rises with wages). Used to escalate and to adjust US service prices to other countries.

Hypothèse

Share of a robot service price that is labour (pilot, technician). The rest is equipment, which learning curves make cheaper.

Hypothèse

Share of a lease or RaaS fee that pays for hardware (learns down). The rest is service and support (moves with wages).

Download these results (CSV)

Résultats

OptionPar moisPar anPer unit (delivery)Coût initialDélai de retour sur investissementBreak-even utilisation5-year NPV vs baseline
Humain Porter runs Référence 21 327 $US255 923 $US8,77 $US— — — —
Robot Buy delivery robots
Robots needed: 2
 14 398 $US172 780 $US5,92 $US240 000 $US 22 mois 31 %
Utilisation 69 %
 384 462 $US
Robot Lease delivery robots
Robots needed: 2
 12 665 $US151 985 $US5,21 $US25 000 $US 2.8 mois 21 %
Utilisation 69 %
 473 978 $US

What moves the answer most

Each bar shows the 5-year NPV of the best robot option when one input moves to the low or high end of its range, with the rest held at your values.

5-year NPV vs baseline: Lease delivery robots5-year NPV vs baseline: Lease delivery robotsWorkloadlow value: 30 → 140 540 $UShigh value: 300 → 1 975 630 $USHuman output per hourlow value: 2 → 723 468 $UShigh value: 5 → 291 648 $USWork that stays humanlow value: 0.1 → 665 862 $UShigh value: 0.5 → 368 402 $USHourly wagelow value: 14.728000000000002 → 339 135 $UShigh value: 22.092 → 608 822 $USRobot output vs a personlow value: 0.5 → 326 255 $UShigh value: 1.2 → 594 406 $USSupervisionlow value: 3 → 523 846 $UShigh value: 15 → 324 374 $USEmployer on-cost multiplierlow value: 1.2790000000000001 → 403 207 $UShigh value: 1.579 → 544 750 $USLease per robot per monthlow value: 1500 → 498 638 $UShigh value: 2500 → 400 001 $USFinancing and discount ratelow value: 0.05 → 512 975 $UShigh value: 0.12 → 427 772 $US473 978 $USlow valuehigh valueSource: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/hospital-delivery/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.

Cost per unit to 2035

Real terms (today's money). Robot hardware follows Wright's law; wages follow each country's history. Shaded band: robots-slow to robots-fast scenarios. Estimations modélisées par Whirrwork, pas des faits.

ChartCoût humain par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Base), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès rapide), Coût robot par unité (Robots : progrès lent). Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/hospital-delivery/). Modelled estimate, not a fact.0,00 $US2,50 $US5,00 $US7,50 $US10,00 $US2026202720282029203020312032203320342035USD / deliveryscenario rangeCoût humain par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Base)Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Coût robot par unité (Robots : pr…Source: Whirrwork Robot-or-Human model v1.0.0 (whirrwork.com/tools/robot-vs-human/hospital-delivery/). Modelled estimat…

Année de bascule: déjà

What the spreadsheet misses

Sécurité
Locked drawers with fingerprint access improve chain of custody for controlled drugs.
Qualité
One hospital reported delivery reliability up 23% (WSJ, 2014).
Flexibilité
Porters also move patients, which these robots never do.
Edge cases
Busy lifts and corridors, old buildings without automated doors.
Customer experience
Staff get used to them quickly; patients barely notice.
Jobs and redeployment
Usually framed as freeing nurses from fetching; porter roles shift to patient transport.
Réglementation
Medication handling rules; fire-door and lift integration needs facilities sign-off.

Voir aussi

Sources de cette page

Les notes et les sources sont en anglais ; la version anglaise fait foi.

  1. Hospitals have purchased TUGs for $75,000-$140,000; leases $1,500-$2,000/month (Becker's Hospital Review, reproduced by Aethon) Becker's Hospital Review via Aethon, 2015-03-31
  2. Tug robots leased for $1,500-$2,000 a month; University of Maryland Medical Center per-trip cost $2.40 by robot vs $5.50 by hand (WSJ, Feb 2014, reproduced by Aethon) The Wall Street Journal via Aethon, 2014-02-23
  3. Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (median hourly wage by occupation) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025-05
  4. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, June 2026: wages and salaries 70.0% of private-industry compensation (series CMU2020000000000P) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026-06
  5. Mean nominal hourly earnings of employees by sex and occupation (ISCO-08), DF_EAR_EHRA_SEX_OCU_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), from national labour force and earnings surveys, 2025
  6. Labour cost levels by NACE Rev. 2 activity (lc_lci_lev): Germany 2022-2025, total labour cost vs wages and salaries per hour Eurostat, 2025
  7. Rates and thresholds for employers 2025 to 2026 (employer Class 1 NIC 15% above £5,000) HM Revenue & Customs, 2025-04-06
  8. 令和6年賃金構造基本統計調査 (Basic Survey on Wage Structure 2024), table 1 by occupation Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan (via e-Stat), 2024-06
  9. Average monthly earnings of employees by sex and economic activity, DF_EAR_EMTA_SEX_ECO_CUR_NB ILOSTAT (International Labour Organization), 2022
  10. Average annual wage of employed persons in urban units in 2024 (by position and by region) National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2025-05-20
  11. Euro foreign exchange reference rates (cross rates to USD), via Frankfurter European Central Bank, 2026-10-23
  12. Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors affecting the cost of airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 3(4), 122-128 Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences, 1936
  13. Nagy, B., Farmer, J. D., Bui, Q. M., & Trancik, J. E. (2013). Statistical basis for predicting technological progress. PLoS ONE, 8(2), e52669 (62 technologies; Wright's law among the best hindcasters; errors grow with horizon) PLoS ONE, 2013