Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Remote Presence Robots In ICU

Wu Ronghua U036423A Having Remote Presence Robots in the neurosurgery intensive care unit(ICU) is the way to allow doctors to communicate more conveniently with the patients, family members and the staffs. As there is a serious lack in intensivists, the physicians who specialize in the care of critically ill patients, these RP-6 mobile robots proved to be helpful to extend the reach of the intensivists. These robots provide more "presence" of the physicians. The robot is about 5-foot-6-inch tall robot and displays the physician face on the monitor screen. The patient then will interact, speaks and hears with the physician through these robots. The robots can also move closer to the patients and zoom in on the patients or the monitors at the side, move to the patient’s record, X-rays, test reports to facilitate the doctors to view them. The physicians can do all this with the control of a joystick in either in their office or even at home. The presence of these intensivists is said to improve patients to reduce care, thereby reducing the stay of the patients and also the cost of their staying. These robots can also allow patients to access directly to medicals experts around the world so that they seek medical advice from them. They can also allow patients to interact with doctors who have performed their surgery, even if the doctors cannot be physically at the patient's bedside. Through surveys, such robots have been well received and some patients even prefer such robots to real doctors.

4 comments:

dars.explore said...

RP-6 is cool. All the medical care will be seeked to the doctor via this RP-6.

As we know, ICU has a certain degree of restriction on the visiting periods. Hence, it will interestingly good if RP-6 can be connected to the patient's closest relative. As such, besides the medical attention is taken care of, the emotional aspect can be smoothen as well.

Koh Ling Ying
U046245W

Anonymous said...

I agree with Ying that this can be used by the patient to communicate with his/her relatives. However, I wonder if the signals sent and received by the robot will affect the other electrical monitors in the room. As far as I know, electronics like mobile phones and laptops are prohibited in the ICU. However, apart from these, it sounds like a great invention. It allows more interaction between the physicians and the patients. Also, the patient might use this to contact his/her doctor when the doctor might not be in the hospital.

Varun Agarwala
U037014W

dars.edutainment said...

I agree that the RP-6 can be used to connect to the patient's relatives for the reasons already mentioned by Koh and Varun. Although RP-6 serves as an efficient monitoring system, I wonder if the reduced face to face communication between doctor and patients will affect the quality of the attention given to the patients.

Lai Wei Lup
U036239X

Assistive said...

i do not think that RP-6 will have an adverse affect on the quality of attention given to the patients. In fact i believe the quality would be enhanced.
The robot ensures that proper communication is maintained with the patient and therefore can assist the hospitals in many ways.
I am not sure about the feasibility but i also think that it might be possible to monitor the dosage of medicines for critically ill patients just like a nurse would and thus be of great service to the medical industry.

NAMAN AGARWAL (u037020w)