Source: California Healthcare Foundation (www.ihealthbeat.org)
Date: 2nd October 2006
The University of Queensland's Center for Online Health in Australia has developed robots that connect patients, physicians and other specialists through video teleconferencing, the "Brisbane Courier Mail" reports.
The mobility of the robots enables video-conferencing consultations among patients, resident physicians and specialists thousands of miles away. A video monitor and camera within the robots capture and send images between Brisbane and local Queensland hospitals, the Courier Mail reports.
Two of the robots are extensions of the telepediatric services in the children's wards of Gladstone Hospital and Mount Isa Hospital, and a third robot will be deployed at Brisbane's Royal Children's Hospital, the Courier Mail reports.
The robots were developed with funding from the mining company Xstrata via the Royal Children's Hospital Foundation (Condren, Brisbane Courier Mail, 9/30).Robot Facilitates Telemedicine in Canada.
Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre in Halifax, Canada, is testing a robot that uses a broadband Internet connection and video technology to connect remote specialists with patients and hospital staff, the Globe and Mail reports.
The robot is equipped with a camera that provides specialists with a 180-degree view, and the flat-screen television attached to the robot's body can rotate 360 degrees and move vertically. The voice of the specialist is transmitted to staff and patients via a voice box.
Ivar Mendez, who is chief of neurosurgery at the hospital, is testing the robot by remotely operating the device with a small gear stick attached to his laptop. The laptop can display images seen by the robot onto a nearby wall, and lines representing the numerous sensors on the robot's body pulse and shorten to indicate the closeness of objects, the Globe and Mail reports.
The InTouch Health robot -- which cost $200,000, or about $179,000 U.S. -- was paid for by an anonymous donor and is the first and only remote-presence technology robotic system in Canada.
The Halifax hospital's pilot will conclude in a few weeks, and then the robot will be tested at other regional hospitals (Moreira, Globe and Mail, 4/27).
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