Meet Turbo Teddy: The robot dog fetching medications for St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital patients

TAMPA, Fla - There’s a high-tech new hire rolling through the halls of St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Tampa — and he’s unleashing a new way to fetch important medicines for kids. 

Turbo Teddy

What we know:

His name is Turbo Teddy. 

At roughly three-feet-tall, he’s an autonomous robot tasked with delivering medications.

While Teddy brings plenty of smiles to patients, his real job is solving a logistical problem for the medical staff.

What he does

The backstory:

Certain medicines, like chemotherapy and medications for GI and neurological patients, are incredibly delicate. 

Because they cannot be shaken, they can't be sent through the hospital’s internal tube system.

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Before Teddy arrived, someone had to carry the medications by hand from the pharmacy – located in the basement of St. Joseph’s Main Hospital — all the way to the Children's Day Hospital, which is part of the St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital.

To save trips and time, the runner would often wait to take several medicines together. 

"We had to have medications in batches so that the one person that was running those medications didn't have to do that multiple times," said Danielle Nelski, nurse manager at the Children’s Day Hospital. "So that would cause a delay sometimes in those medications getting to our patients."

That was the experience of local patient, David Fink, who received treatment for Crohn's disease at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital for more than a decade. 

So the Fink family made a donation to fund Turbo Teddy, whose name and likeness is inspired by the family’s Pomeranian. 

The new way to fetch medications 

Dig deeper:

Turbo Teddy can make medication runs individually. 

He currently averages 10 to 20 deliveries a day, ensuring kids get their medicine faster while giving valuable time back to human healthcare workers.

"It allows the pharmacy staff to stay with the medications down in the pharmacy," Nelski explained. "And it allows nursing staff to stay in proximity with the patients instead of having to have somebody manually run back and forth several times throughout the day."

Turbo Teddy is treated like an official employee. 

He has his own badge to scan through secure doors and is programmed to call and ride the elevator by himself. He can also avoid people in the hallways.