Posted on 07/05/2009 5:51:43 AM PDT by 6SJ7
Mobile machines, remote hookups help Lahey Clinic cope with shortage of specialists
BEVERLY - The robot glides past the beeping heart monitor, past a row of patients supine on their electric beds, past the beehive of the nurses’ station. The sleek, metallic body, dusky blue, stops outside Room 9 and slowly rolls through the doorway.
Discuss COMMENTS (33) “Mrs. Morash, Dr. Liesching’s here,’’ says nurse Dawn Deschenes, announcing the arrival of the robot to a gray-haired woman breathing behind an oxygen mask. The face of Timothy Liesching, a pulmonary critical care doctor, gazes at his patient from a computer screen on top of the robot.
“I’m just going to look in your monitor now,’’ says Liesching, his voice flowing from a speaker on the robot even though he is sitting in his office at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, 22 miles - and one large traffic snarl - away. The computer swivels away from her face. “Your oxygen looks good, your respiratory rate looks pretty good.’’
Even from his distant location, Liesching is able to listen to the beat of his patient’s heart, the heavy sounds of her battered lungs struggling to pull in air. The doctor asks a few more questions before he maneuvers the robot out of the room using a joystick he operates in Burlington.
The machine that Liesching, director of tele medicine at the Lahey Clinic, is guiding down the corridors of Beverly Hospital is the only one like this in New England, say officials at the clinic.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Once they perfect this technology you won’t have to worry as much about staph infections either. You can just sterilize the robots.
I want a butler version of this robot. Doesn’t even seem real.
So, how does he plug himself BACK in??
A bulter/maid version would be nice.
This is the future of America.
The only way we are ever going to compete with low labor countries like china is to out automate them. Once you build the automation, it takes labor costs out of the equation and it doesn’t make sense to produce anywhere but locally.
Besides for most routine screenings, a robot could probably do what a doctor does, with the help of a nurse.
If you want to lower healthcare costs, give people access to antibiotics and certain other drugs without doctors visits. Or automate the visits, so that they aren’t so costly. If you don’t want to give them full access, let a nurse confirm the symptoms.
Most modern mobile robots can re-attach themselves to a charging station.
And we can paint them different colors to get around the diversity laws!
Was it booked as a “doctor’s visit”? Pretty easy way to pay for the robot... $100 every 15 minutes; you could probably do the billing pretty quickly also.
The legal and tax aspects of tele-presence will be interesting, especially if the person is in a different state or country. If the doc never physically sets foot in a state, is he liable for state income tax? Which state's malpractice laws will apply?
Visualize your doctor operating out of a center in China or India.
Today, you have x-rays being emailed to radiologists in India, who email back their analysis.
Yes, we can program the doctor robots to speak unintelligibly, and a nurse robot will come in and translate for him.
More likely to be operating out of a government bureacracy building in Washington D.C.
I think instead of a doctor remote controlled robot, you have a robot doctor capable of basic diagnosis, prescription and referral services. If the robot doesn't see anything remarkable, and there are no patient comments that cause concern, it prescribes medicine, if something needs human intervention, then it summons a real doctor to examine the patient.
Or, more likely, have the computer do the translation...
Actually, this got started with robots for remote surgery, where an actual specialist surgeon would get there hours or days too late. . .
The “robot” is doing nothing. The remote specialist is talking with the patient through a remote TV hookup, cleverly packaged as a robot. Ho Hum. Robots aren’t taking over the world.
“Domo Arigato Mr Roboto.”
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