With the SCALLOG robotic solution, Lyon Sud Hospital is projecting itself into the hospital logistics of tomorrow
In 2023, the Hospices Civils de Lyon launched the BAURéaLS project to modernize the operating rooms, emergency departments, and intensive care units of Lyon Sud Hospital. With an investment of 170 million euros, this ambitious project integrates the SCALLOG solution to optimize logistics and improve the efficiency of critical care.
In 2023, the Hospices Civils de Lyon began the BAURéaLS project to modernize the Operating Rooms, Emergency Reception, and Intensive Care Units at Lyon Sud Hospital. This project, representing an investment of 150 million euros for construction (12,500 m² of new construction and 16,800 m² of renovations) and 20 million euros for equipment, aims to optimize the performance, organization, and flow of operating rooms, emergency departments, and critical care units while meeting the aspirations of healthcare professionals and patients. Among the key organizational innovations are 30 new operating rooms, which will be centralized and supported by a logistics platform, the GEOLAB, responsible for the centralized preparation of medical devices necessary for the 150 daily surgical interventions. To ensure reliable trolley preparations while optimizing space and working conditions for operators within the GEOLAB, the BAURéaLS project plans to deploy SCALLOG’s “Goods to Person” solution in the second half of 2025 – 134 mobile shelves transported by 16 robots to 4 stations – to streamline stock and automate the preparation of consumable medical devices, whether single-use or re-sterilizable (DMRS), for surgical activity.
As Guillaume Geslin, BAURéaLS Project Director, tells us: “Today, the hospital must innovate to free up time for caregivers so they can focus on their core mission, patient care and follow-up. As part of the BAURéaLS project, in addition to restructuring our technical platforms, the Hospices Civils de Lyon are committed to profoundly transforming the logistics of supply and return for the operating rooms by centralizing and automating all the equipment flows needed for interventions in a logistics platform called GEOLAB. The SCALLOG ‘Goods to Person’ robotization applied to the storage of medical devices and the preparation of intervention trolleys, a European first, should enable us to effectively contribute to the process we have defined.”
A structure, operators, and robots dedicated to operating room logistics!
How can logistics be brought closer to critical care and emergency units while freeing healthcare staff from the movements and handling associated with equipment preparations before interventions? This was one of the challenges of Lyon Sud Hospital. To address this, the BAURéaLS project plans to create a logistics platform called GEOLAB, located on an intermediate floor close to the new operating rooms, which will centralize, manage, and automate the storage, preparation, and return management of medical devices for interventions. Indeed, automation will be key to reducing the strain and improving working conditions for logistics staff and, by extension, the care units. In 2023, Lyon Sud Hospital issued a call for tenders to equip its future logistics platform with an automation solution tasked with optimizing the inflow and outflow of medical devices and ensuring the daily reliability of intervention trolley (called Geodes) preparations and returns while optimizing dedicated spaces. The automation solution, decidedly lightweight and agile, will need to adapt to and optimize a specific hospital logistics environment, characterized by calibrated flows, significant architectural constraints (three-meter height, columns…), and perfect mastery of the ISO 7 environment to prevent dust particles, impurities, and the risk of medical device contamination.
Guillaume Geslin, BAURéaLS Project Director, declares: “All internal stakeholders at HCL who analyzed the SCALLOG proposal were convinced by the efficiency and adaptability of the SCALLOG solution to the flows to be processed and the constraints imposed by the renovated building. It’s now up to SCALLOG to confirm this.”
Due to the construction schedule, the SCALLOG project will be phased over 18 months with several key milestones: detailed study in the first half of 2024, delivery, reception, and final installation in autumn 2025 at the opening of the first phase of the new operating rooms. Ultimately, the automated SCALLOG area, covering 600 m², will include 134 shelves transported by 16 robots to 4 stations to optimize storage in bins of more than 2,500 references, from compresses to surgical boxes, and prepare intervention trolleys half a day in advance. The SCALLOG solution will be “on call 24/7.
