Robots are being used for the first time in hospitals. "Robot-nurses" perform a variety of tasks such as delivering medicine, food and laboratory samples to sickrooms and taking away waste. Patients aren't treated by robots, as this is still done by medical staff. The idea is to employ robots to transport supplies between departments. "Nurses often have to break off from what they are doing to gather supplies," says Peter Seiff, who makes the robots called TUGs. Research shows any interruption in medical work can lead to errors --- a nurse may forget whether she has given medicine and may give a patient double the dose   or none at all. The robots vary in size according to what job they perform, but normally take the shape of a metal box on wheels, with a box on the side containing their software. After being programmed, the robots are able to find their way around a hospital unassisted. They also contain scanning technology to create electronic pictures or a "memory" of routes on their hard drives to help them go through passages, doors and other obstacles. Each robot is also monitored at the producer's headquarters   in case it runs into any difficulties. Trials show TUGs reduce the time it takes for a patient to receive medicine, and stop drugs from going missing. A study at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in the U.S. found that when three TUGs were used over the course of a year, the average length of time from the drugstore receiving a prescription to the patient receiving it dropped from 74 minutes to 30 minutes and saved nurses 6,123 hours finding medicines. It also cut the number of medicines that went missing to zero. "The biggest complaints we receive from patients is that the nurses don't spend enough time with them. Anything that frees nurses is a  _ ," says Katherine Mulligan, director of nursing at the hospital, "The TUGs allow nurses to spend more time focusing on patient care. Nurse satisfaction has improved." What is the attitude of the author towards robot-nurses?
Neutral. Positive. Negative. Unknown.