Using Ozires, a Humanoid Robot, to Continuing Education of Healthcare Workers: A Pilot Study

Continuing education of health professionals in relation to hand hygiene practices or other issues is a challenge for health services. How to take a healthcare worker from his work sector, for example, Intensive Care Units (ICUs) or Operating Room, to give him classes and lectures? Here we investigated whether or not it is possible to adapt a toy robot as a tool to continuous education of healthcare workers in the context of hand hygiene compliance, a big problem for hospital infection. We got to adapt the MeccaNoid G15KS, a toy programmable robot named Ozires, as an instrument of health training to improve the compliance with hand hygiene. The robot was adapted with mini projector, spy camera, an automatic alcohol hand sanitizer dispenser, a cell phone and a cell phone support and an audio amplifier. Ozires, accompanied by infection control practitioners, performs short video-lecture presentations and own reports of the institution's data regarding infections and the hand hygiene rate, working from 10 to 15 minutes in each target sector. After the insertion of Ozires in three ICUs, the hand hygiene rate increased from about 36%, between January and July, to 65% in August-November/2016.