One often thinks of South Korea or Japan when hearing stories about robot medical-care workers, but a hospital in Scotland has become the first in the UK and one of the only in the world to get serious about employing robots in its day-to-day operations.

The construction of the Forth Valley Royal Hospital in Larbert, Stirlingshire, cost a hefty sum of £300m British pounds, but its new method of patient-care promises to lead the way towards a brighter future. The hospital will use a number of worker robots to clean the facilities, bring fresh linen and food to patients, as well as dispense drugs and remove clinical waste. The machines will be set up to follow specific routs to make sure they don’t bump into obstacles or each other, and will move through corridors underneath the hospital. They will also have the ability to open doors and locate their exact position with the laser beams mounted on top of their forklift-like frames. And to minimize errors and problems, there will always be a human on stand-by.

Besides making the lives of nurses easier, one of the most important aspects of their application will be controlling infection. When dealing with disease, tasks are often separated between “dirty and clean”, and one person doing both jobs increases the risk of spreading the sickness. The robots, however, will be immune to such threats, and will make the hospital a safer place both for staff and patients.

The hospital workers will not have to worry about their jobs, however, as the primary mission of these robots will be to make sure staff have more time to spend with patients, while the machines do the manual work. The hospital opens in August, and it will be interesting to see how well this innovative method will work.

BBC has more details and a sort video here.