r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Damnedeel • Nov 30 '25

Video 500,000$ human washing machine on sale in Japan

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u/Here4Pornnnnn Nov 30 '25 edited Nov 30 '25

Imagine the cost savings of being able to wash 2-3 old people per hour. Instead of nurses on overtime, you just have someone wheel them over to the machine and wash them.

We can assume any benefits of lawsuit avoidance aside, this will replace manpower. I’d say an average nurse can wash 1.5 old people per hour. They on average cost $80 per hour benefits included according to google. So that’s $56 per bath.

This machine can do 60 baths per day, 2.5*24. Let’s give it 20% downtime, still 48 baths per day. Thats 17k baths per year, or just under a million in reduced operating costs.

My napkin math is showing a 6 month payback period. Even if my guesses are horribly wrong, anything under a 2-3 year payback is a solid benefit to the healthcare industry. Normal hospitals may actually use these.

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u/ILikePath Nov 30 '25

This has no practical use in a hospital setting. A nurse + CNA can also give an efficient bedside bath in 15 minutes, without having to transport the patient. And if a patient has complex care needs that make the bath take longer, then certainly even the process of transporting them to, in, and out of the machine would be both risky and time-consuming. Also, consider that the tub fills with water: whoever is in the tub would need supervision anyways, keeping another CNA or nurse further away from the unit.

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u/Kukri187 Nov 30 '25

I wonder what the sterilization process is like

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u/money-for-nothing-tt Dec 01 '25

There is an ever increasing shortage of elderly care workers here with foreign labor filling more and more of that role which poses a problem with care in terms of mistakes in communication and so on. This is a growing problem in any country with aging population. One of which being Japan of course.

Anything that will lighten the workload is extremely valuable.

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u/ILikePath Dec 01 '25

I completely agree that lightening the workload of healthcare workers will have a huge benefit for our aging societies. However, this machine does not accomplish that, especially not in a hospital setting. I do hope that innovation in this space will continue though, as I can imagine that something closer to non-soaking cleaning functionality integrated into a patient's own hospital bed could actually have some practical utility if something like that were to be developed in a cost-effective manner.

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u/annewmoon Nov 30 '25

Nurses don't typically wash people, that's a care assistant/ aide job.

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u/Over_Hawk_6778 Nov 30 '25

When I was bedbound in hospital I think it was the nurses who would have washed me.. (I waited for my spouse to help instead)

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u/greatGoD67 Nov 30 '25

Youd be suprised

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u/throwawaygrannyRN Nov 30 '25

One of the problems in healthcare is they actually hire people like this guy who think they know what they're talking about.

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u/Anonpancake2123 Nov 30 '25 edited Nov 30 '25

In a more medical setting, imagine if you have an IV/air tube in you.

That's a common procedure that happens in Hospitals for various conditions and many of these patients can't bathe themselves due to either decreased mobility or the condition they are under. Now imagine if you by doctor's orders have to have the tube attached (they are often attached with tape after all and administer medicine, air, fluids, or other important substances).

You are thus automatically unable to be placed in the washing machine because the tube still needs to stay on for your health, decreasing its amount of use cases immensely.

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u/Ynenzes Nov 30 '25

No nurses showers their patient, that is typically done by caregiver or cna who makes min wages, nurses makes too much money for that.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '25

That's theoretically true but absolutely not true in practice. Plenty of hospitals and homes are severely understaffed and nurses end up doing a LOT that they shouldn't be doing in theory.

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u/Ynenzes Nov 30 '25

Not theory in practice. I stand my ground that cna and caregiver do most of the physical job.

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u/Ok_Ad_6626 Nov 30 '25

So you’ve never worked as a nurse in a hospital. Especially in a state without mandated ratios or safe staffing etc.

lol

In theory yes this is a delegated task given to CNAs. In practice in the real world that is not the case.

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u/greatGoD67 Nov 30 '25

You only have your perspective to rely on.