The Challenge

Facility Expansion During the 1980s, the Stanford Hospital and Clinics and Stanford University School of Medicine launched a major expansion program. In 1989, a new adult hospital was added to the Stanford University

Medical Center including twenty new operating rooms, a state-of-the-art cath-angio suite, intensive care and inpatient units, and extensive support facilities. Just a few years later, they built the new Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital facility, which is part of the Medical Center, adjacent to the adult hospital.

The Solution

Total Automation
Shortly after the expansions, Stanford Hospital and Clinics contracted Swisslog to install a TransLogic pneumatic tube system to enhance its already outstanding patient care capabilities.

In 1993, Stanford Hospital and Clinics initially installed a six-inch TransLogic Matrix software-controlled pneumatic tube system. The system reliability translated into high user confidence as exemplified by the average of 7,000 daily transactions now being recorded.

“The tube system has given us the opportunity to eliminate remote services in peripheral areas and to have more centralization of services,” says Lou Saksen, Vice President of General Services at Stanford University Medical Center. He attributes the success of their tube system to a proactive preventive maintenance program and extensive user training provided by Leander Robinson, Supervisor of Electrical Shop Engineering & Maintenance.

“At first, people were reluctant to use the system,” Robinson explains. “But use of the system soon increased. Staff realized that they could walk their specimens but the tube system was right there and it was reliable, so why would they need to walk?” Brian Sholes, Director of Design and Construction, echoes the importance of the pneumatic tube system to hospital staff: “It is a part of life here; people rely on the system on a daily basis.”

Further System Expansions
Today, the Stanford Hospital and Clinics medical campus has 74 send/receive stations. The pneumatic tube system is now linked to the pneumatic tube system at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. The system does the work of what used to require 50 dedicated full-time staff members.

Stanford Hospital and Clinics is expanding its tube system into a new Clinical Cancer Center that houses facilities for the Divisions of Surgical Oncology, Medical Oncology, and Radiation Oncology. “The tube system has been very successful here,” concludes Sholes. “It has worked well in serving the hospital.”

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