Robot Doctors and Remote Presence

2007.06.06 by John Serrao

Day 3 of Telepresence World is filled with speeches that are showing the application of telepresence outside of the conference room, namely the medical applications of the technology. The first speech of the day that I got to see today was Yulung Wang, CEO of InTouch Health. He was talking about clinical robots that can aid in helping doctors remotely diagnose patients. He even brought out a robot named RP7 right on stage (pictured). These robots 'act' as remote doctors that monitor patients in ICUs. Each robot uses telepresence to communicate between the remote doctor and robot doctor, so the patient feels as if their own doctor is actually in the room with them. While the image quality is not that which you will see in a standard telepresence room, the solution is mobile.

Surprisingly, Wang reported studies that show patients prefer the robot care with their own doctor over that a real yet foreign ICU doctor at a 3:1 ratio. Another University of Maryland study showed the robot was so effective at diagnosing patients that the early hospital discharges by the robot halved hospital expenditures. This presence technology is an interesting example of how space can be bridged in such a way that it completely eliminates the perception of long-distance.

We also got to see Stephen Papadopoulos from the Barrow Neurological Institute. The large institute with over 50 fellows has a special medical telepresence application designed just for surgery teaching. The system takes a telepresence unit and broadcasts the surgery on the big displays in a remote location. Little screens on each desk show exactly what the surgeon is doing during the operation. Stephen even featured the HPL exclusive video we produced last year ago when the room was first deployed: