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Robo-doc on ward round Remote presence robots move into hospitals
Imagine lying in a hospital bed. Suddenly a robot looking like R2-D2 from Star Wars wheels into your sickroom and says: “How are we feeling today?” This is not science fiction, but reality. In some hospitals in the United States and now also in the UK, robo-docs are making ward rounds. Doctor Robot is remotely steered by a real doctor via PC and joystick. Instead of a head, the remote presence robot RP6 has an LCD screen on which the face of the remote doctor appears. Two-way video capability enables the doctor to communicate with the patient and zoom in on wounds and charts. High time pressure on medical staff One of the first doctors who used the remote presence robot from home is Dr. Louis Kavoussi from Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland, where trials have been ongoing since Spring 2004. “Ward-rounds haven’t changed since the 1930s – but our hospitals have,” Dr. Kavoussi said. “They are bigger now, we have to look after more patients, and sometimes doctors have to cover more than one hospital.” Remote presence robots are meant to fill a critical void. Physicians in hospitals face a growing number of patients who require intensive care. The ageing of the population in most industrialised countries will aggravate this imbalance between a growing number of patients and an overloaded medical staff. Remote presence robots can help physicians and nurses to better cope with the time pressure in medical care.
Remote health control Critics claim that robots can never substitute the personal touch of a real doctor. High-tech physicians like Dr. Parv Sains, who leads a recently started pilot project at St. Mary’s Hospital in London, argue that the benefit of contacting the patient whenever needed outweighs the loss of human touch. “If a specialist is at a conference in California but their medical opinion is needed for a St. Mary’s patient, the RP6 robot provides an instant and global link at any time of the day or night,” he explained. A major benefit is, according to Dr. Sains, that the doctor who performed a surgery can follow up the healing process of the patient, even if he cannot be physically at the patient’s bedside. Beyond patient care, the robots are also used to remotely consult experts on difficult cases or to allow physicians to attend administrative meetings from outside the hospital. Another application area could be situations in which it would not be advisable to physically send in doctors, such as in military operations, natural or terrorist disasters, at sea, or in other remote locations. Popular superhero The first trials in the US seem to indicate that patients have accepted the robot doctor. “People love it. I was very surprised how much our patients enjoy remote video interactions via the robot,” said Dr. Kavoussi. Some patients have even told him that the robo-doc was more enjoyable than a standard bedside visit. At the Hackensack University Medical Center in Hackensack, New Jersey, the robo-doc is called Mr. Rounder and enjoys a particular popularity in the pediatrics wing, where he rolls around dressed in a superhero’s cape. “When the robot comes in, everyone giggles,” the hospital’s chief operating officer, Gwen MacKenzie, was quoted in Business Week. “Before people see it, they are resistant to the idea,” said Yulun Wang, CEO of Californian high-tech startup InTouch Health, who developed the robo-doc. “But once they see that it is just like communicating with a real person, their opinion changes radically.” Further development In U.S. hospitals the adoption of InTouch’s robo-docs is increasing. Thirty-five of them are already making their ward rounds. Customers can rent them for $4,000 a month, or buy them for $120,000 a piece. InTouch is working on integrating the robot with the hospitals’ patient-charting software, so doctors might be able to save streaming-video sequences directly into their patients’ electronic charts. The company is also working on a robot that could find its own way from room to room by reading markers on the floor. Dr. Sains from St. Mary’s Hospital does not expect that robots will completely replace doctors on ward rounds. This was confirmed by his medical colleague Dr. Prokar Dasgupta from Guy’s Hospital in London, a pioneer in robot-supported surgery: “I like to have some face-to-face contact with my patients.” Further information on the
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