JUST WHAT THE ROBOT ORDERED: At several Texas health networks, a friendly-looking robot with a mechanical arm and blinking lights for eyes can be seen whirring around the hospital floor, ferrying lab samples and protective gear for nursing staff. At Boston’s Brigham & Women’s this summer, a roaming four-legged robot with mounted infrared cameras loped into the emergency department to take patients’ vital signs. At Los Angeles’ Adventist Health White Memorial, seven devices the size of mini-fridges zip around to disinfect patient rooms with UV light.
Whether they’re restocking supply rooms or taking patients’ heart rates, the roving machines could help contain the coronavirus’ spread by cutting down on possible exposure between staff and patients, health system leaders say. The systems were already in the early stages of piloting robots before the pandemic, but the crisis has generated more interest than ever, robotics experts tell us. The big question is whether to rush to automate is pushing aside viable existing technologies
“What we’re trying to do is introduce ways of really preserving safety of health care personnel by having assistance … in doing tasks that can essentially be handed off to a robot,” says MIT assistant professor Giovanni Traverso, part of the research team that sent Boston Dynamics’ dog-like robot named Spot into Brigham & Women’s exam rooms to measure vital signs like temperature and blood pressure.
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We have Covid to thank for a robot revolution.
Whether they’re restocking supply rooms or taking patients’ heart rates, the machines could help contain Covid’s spread by cutting down on possible exposure between staff and patients, health leaders say. https://t.co/e3uN697Zsz pic.twitter.com/F8RK6Qqiew
— POLITICO (@politico) December 2, 2020
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