Every hospital may end up with Xenex robots to sterilize rooms

Hospital-associated infections (healthcare-associated infections) still remain a significant problem today, even though we have so many antimicrobial agents at our disposal. What we need is an automated robot that can go into every room and

http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/26/technology/xenex_robot/

Robots enter Fukushima reactor building

A pair of remote controlled robots entered a reactor building at the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Sunday morning for the first time.

Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power is hoping the iRobot Packbots will be able to provide data on the current condition inside the buildings, parts of which contain high levels of radioactivity and are hazardous for workers to enter.

Make Way for the Robots – Automated Medical Care is a Reality

Author: Cathy Thomas

The terms “robotics” and “artificial intelligence” have been bandied about for quite some time now, and we’ve seen the advances that have been made in robotics technology and applied successfully in various industries. The world of medicine however, was lagging behind – when lives are at stake, perhaps human intuition was considered superior to robotic efficiency. However, all that is set to change in the coming decade, with research in medicinal robots advancing by leaps and bounds. In particular, robots are already being used or will soon be used in:


• Providing care for senior citizens: In a nation filled with baby boomers who don’t have caregivers and who live alone, these robots are definitely going to be a boon not just to the elderly, but also to the ailing healthcare system of this country. Charles Kemp, assistant biomedical engineering professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and his team at the institute’s Healthcare Robotics Lab are working on robots that can safely and effectively help care for senior citizens. Ideally, the machines would be able to provide their charges with access to the Internet, remind them to take their medicines, open doors and drawers, and retrieve objects like pill bottles when guided by a laser pointer, radio signals or touch.

• Aiding surgical teams: This one’s already happening – a tiny robotic arm and workstation unit together called SpineAssist is helping surgeons map out a patient’s spinal anatomy in advance so that patients are spared of complications and pain during and after the surgery. SpineAssist helps surgeons avoid making deep incisions while repairing the spine. Over 2,000 spinal implant surgeries have been completed with a 98 percent success rate with no cases of nerve damage. The use of the robot reduced patients’ hospital stay by 33 percent and produced a 70 percent reduction in misplaced implants.

Medical Robots - Fighting The War Against Deafness

I love robots. I saw this story last week on Medical News Today titled, "Medical Robots - Fighting The War Against Deafness." The robot is an intelligent micro-drill for surgery and it will be used first for cochlear implant surgery. It will be among a number of cutting edge medical robots to be highlighted at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) 'Robotics in Surgery' conference at Birdcage Walk, London. I'd love to attend that conference. Wouldn't you?

BEAR Robot

BEAR shown lifting a huge weight, grabbing and dragging a casualty, smashing a window, ripping through a door, curling a barbell while balancing, and driving through rough terrain. For more information, see http://www.vecnarobotics.com/

Shape-shifting robots (MIT and Harvard)

Some exciting developments at MIT and Harvard:

Self-folding sheets of a plastic-like material point the way to robots that can assume any conceivable 3-D structure.

By combining origami and electrical engineering, researchers at MIT and Harvard are working to develop the ultimate reconfigurable robot — one that can turn into absolutely anything...

Studded with magnets and electronic muscles known as actuators, a prototype robot developed at MIT can automatically fold itself into an airplane or an origami boat.

Robots in hospitals improving patient safety

I love robots. R2-D2 from Star Wars is my favorite robot. When I retire someday, I'm planning on building a full-size R2-D2 that will move around my house and fetch me my slippers.

We're seeing more robots in the hospitals. Most of these won't be roaming the halls (except for the slow robot that delivers the mail), but quite a few are being used to dispense medications and to perform other tasks in the inpatient setting. A few months ago, Forbes had an article titled, "R2-D2 Has Your Pills." They mentioned how the Robot-Rx (medication-dispensing robot made by McKesson) is being used in a John Muir hospital to reduce medical errors related to drug dispensing. According to that article:

McKesson has installed 400 medicine-dispensing robots at hospitals around the country. They cost between $750,00 and $1 million. McKesson builds the robots at a factory in Pittsburgh, PA. 

Speaking of robots, I'm still waiting to see some iRobot Roomba and Scooba robots in the hospitals. They're great for floor cleaning. Speaking of iRobot, did you know that several members of the management team and Board Members are MIT graduates? No surprise, is it? Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like had I pursued a career in robotics and biomechanical engineering.

Robot doctor Dr. Kevin Chung

The U.S. Army has a robot doctor. This is a pretty cool video of Dr. Kevin Chung using a sophisticated robot to deliver remote medical care. Check out this CNN video clip:

Biomedical engineering and high-speed robotic hands

There's a part of me that's always wanted to be a biomedical engineer. As I watch this video about a robotic hand, I'm reminded of some of the things that motivated me to go to MIT and study engineering.

I believe that prosthetic technology will get very advanced in the next few decades. We're seeing some incredible innovations in robotic technology, aren't we?

Military robot "doctors"

Watch this interesting little CNN clip about robot "doctors" in the military.

Grand Rounds July 14, 2009: Technology and Healthcare

Welcome to Grand Rounds Vol. 5 No. 43 @ Medicine & Technology. The theme is this week is to look at different ways technology is changing the world of healthcare. I am your host this week and I hope you'll enjoy some of these interesting stories.

To start things off, we see Marya (Healthcare, etc.) talking about patient rights and the potential effects of false positive results. This may lead to unnecessary tests and/or medications and possibly even some invasive procedures. Do we really need to biopsy every small incidentaloma that appears on imaging studies? Perhaps as diagnostic testing improves over time, we will have fewer false positives.

Ramona (Suture for a Living) reminds us that we must not Forget HIPAA Privacy Rules as we continue to expand the use of electronic health records (EHRs). We know that EHR adoption will increase rapidly over the next several years as billions of dollars get channeled from the government.

Jolie (I am Dr. Jolie Bookspan, The Fitness Fixer) describes some of the high-tech things she got to do as a military research scientist. I wonder what those pilots experience as they go through acceleration testing and undergo serious g-force effects.

Bongi (other things amanzi) writes about a funny story that happened during his Saturday rounds when his boss focused on clothes and not on anyone's morning breath (improved breathalyzers in the future should pick up faint signals of ETOH during morning rounds).

Alison (Shoot Up or Put Up) talks how the internet has provided her with some useful tips to help her live with diabetes. The web is full of both reliable and unreliable health information for patients. Even healthcare professional sometimes get misguided by the information that can be found online.

Ryan (ACP Internist) shares an awesome acronym of the week: SHUTi, a new Internet program that shows promise for helping people get to sleep. Can stories, quizzes and games really teach people to have better sleep habits? Let's see.

Hank (InsureBlog) talks about how some patients are cleaning up their own hospital rooms. Perhaps once we have some fully-automated cleaning robots, we should be free of that problem. We just need iRobot to make make some hospital-grade Roomba and Scooba cleaning robots.

Nancy (Teen Health 411) writes about an exciting electronic Wellness Assessment for Youth - called WAY2GO! that's coming to We're Talking Teen Health at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF). Thanks to a partnership between the Health Trust, Vive, and PAMF, teens will be able to get a personalized health report back with links to a new service providing free personal health coaching via the web and their cell phones.

Sam (Canadian Medicine) writes about Dr. Bob Thirsk, a Canadian physician who is living on the International Space Station. What's he doing up there? Providing medical care for his fellow astronauts and operating the Canadarm2. I'd love to head out to space some day.

Jay (Colorado Health Insurance Insider) suggests that change in protocol for breech births may actually benefit mothers, babies, and health insurance companies. Is it possible that surgical technology has made it too convenient to opt for a C-section? What if we performed fewer C-sections?

Dr. Charles (The Examining Room of Dr. Charles) writes about the low-tech importance of empathy in taking a family history, and the precarious control of emotions that is needed in being a good listener. What does that look like? A level-headed, composed and somewhat thoughtful response.

OTW (On The Wards) writes how the increasing prevalence of drug-resistant bacteria is generating a need for newer weapons against infectious diseases. Why do we have all these superbugs? Are healthcare professionals too eager to prescribe antibiotics? Let's hope some advances in drug development will lead to more effective therapies against these multi-drug-resistant organisms.

Clinical Cases (Clinical Cases and Images - Blog) writes about ways to improve medical RSS aggregators. Do you even know what RSS stands for? What about Web 2.0? Speaking of RSS and Web 2.0, do you Twitter? Make sure to follow interesting medical bloggers on Twitter. You can start by following me @DrJosephKim

Allergy Notes (Allergy Notes) talks about one of my favorite topics: chocolate. Or, actually, chocolate allergies. I think if I ever developed that, I'd be taking Benadryl all the time. It's hard for me to imagine a life without chocolate. I could live without many things, but I'd really miss chocolate. If I developed a chocolate allergy that resulted in anaphylaxis, I'd probably go through several epi-pens each day.

Murali (SharpBrains) discusses the Pros and Cons of the most common assessments to identify cognitive problems, introducing the opportunity presented by innovative computerized neuropsychological tests. I think I'd prefer going through a battery of assessment tests over a brain biopsy. How about you?

Barb (Florencedotcom) writes about the well-known IT caveat "garbage in-garbage out," and what it means since the medication use system we rely on is rife with failure points. I haven't thought about GIGO in a very long time. We definitely need more drug safety specialists to help prevent medication errors. Computerized Prescriber Order Entry (CPOE) may reduce some errors, but it won't eliminate all of them.

In a guest post, Michael (Health Business Blog) talks about how Dr. Francis Collins (nominated as the head of the NIH) is getting a bum rap. What do you think about the Human Genome Project? I think it's rather amazing to see how far we've come in human genomic science.

The Samurai Radiologist (The Samurai Radiologist) asks: Which background music/sound is optimal for cognitive activities such as film interpretation? A quick and dirty study while on call suggests classical music. Bach, to be precise. In my former life, I used to play the oboe (but I wasn't one of those crazy, fanatical oboe players).

Randel (Disruptive Women in Health Care) blogs about the medical device industry, particularly the “use (or underuse)” of technology as it relates to what she describes as an “arcane” payment system. Although comparative effectiveness research must be used to test new medical technology, reform in the payment system is equally necessary.

Jan (Doc Gurley, Posts From An Insane Healthcare System) covers new information about the placebo effect, including a hierarchy of results (did you know big pills work better than small ones?). In her article, she also points out that positively reinforcing a result makes it more likely to happen. So does this mean all those TV and internet drug adds are boosting a drug's efficacy?

David (HealthBlawg :: David Harlow’s Health Care Law Blog) spoke with Prof. Rodwin about his proposal that all de-identified health data be subject to public ownership, so that private companies cannot restrict access to it and/or monetize it. Public ownership would ensure availability of data for comprehensive public health and evidence-based medicine uses.

Chris (Life in the Fast Lane) offers some pointers to help ‘Web 2.0 laggards’ pull their heads out of the ground and off-load the stress of information overload. Fear of information overload is a barrier preventing doctors from using web resources. But, given that humanity has been experiencing information overload since the invention of the Gutenberg press, ignoring web resources to avoid confronting this daunting problem is a maladaptive, self-defeating strategy.

Well, that wraps it up for this week. Thanks for attending Grand Rounds here at Medicine and Technology. And next week, head over to our surprise, last-minute guest host's site: www.docgurley.com (Doc Gurley, Posts From An Insane Healthcare System), for details on how you can submit. In addition to hosting Grand Rounds, Doc Gurley also will be, that same weekend, speaking at the Mystery Writer's conference in Marin about death, mayhem and the urban underside of life. If you're looking for inspiration, or a theme for Grand Rounds' July 21 submissions, the code word for next week's Grand Rounds is...mystery! Get your submission in early and win big Big BIG karma points! [AND, if you're a San Francisco Bay Area health blogger, send an email to Doc Gurley at docgurley (at) gmail (dot) com for details about the first ever health bloggers' meet-and-greet - ALSO on July 21!]

It's a Tree-Climbing Robot!

This may seem a bit off-topic, but you'll see me tying this into medicine and technology. This photo on the right is of a tree-climbing robot developed by engineers at the University of Pennsylvania. RiSE is a four-legged robot that can both scamper along the ground and rapidly climb a tree or a pole. RiSE V3 was designed and built at Boston Dynamics (they make the four-legged military robot BigDog).

So how is this robotic technology relevant to medicine and technology? It's relevant because robotic technology has been used to help disabled people walk (ReWalk Exoskeleton). As engineers develop more sophisticated robots, this type of technology may translate over to the healthcare field and help people who are physically disabled. Image source: Technology Review.

MDS - Mobile Dexterous Social

I must be on a robots kick right now. I love robots and I especially love the fact that so much is happening at my favorite schools (MIT and UMass Amherst).

MDS doesn't stand for Myelodysplastic Syndrome if you're with the MIT Personal Robots Group. Instead, it stands for: Mobile Dexterous Social

Meet Nexi

Nexi has a face that is capable of displaying various emotions. This was made possible through collaborative efforts with Xitome Design. Doesn't the chassis remind you of a Segway? The chassis was developed by the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics - University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of Nexi involves the social learning component. How do robots learn to interact with people? If Nexi can mimic human expression, that can elevate the level of communication with people. After all, we're naturally expressive beings and emotions play a key part of our lives.

Speaking of robots... how about a medical robot for your grandma?

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst are developing robots to help elderly individuals living alone. These robots can check certain vital signs (using a stethoscope), call 9-1-1, and provide video conferencing services. Want to learn more?

Take a look at the uBOT-5

This is a great example of technology improving home health care. Elderly individuals need an easy way to contact emergency services. Of course, if they're unconscious, making that 9-1-1 becomes impossible. That's why they need to have a robot in the house.

I can't wait to see where this technology goes. I bet the next robot version will look more like R2-D2. Then all the Baby Boomers who grew up on Star Wars will need to have one!

See roboworld in 2009!

The next time I visit Pittsburgh, I'll have to make a trip to see roboworld. Carnegie Science Center today announced plans to open roboworld, the nation’s largest and most comprehensive permanent robotics exhibition, in spring 2009.

I've always been a fan of robotics and I truly believe that robots will change the face of healthcare. Robotics have revolutionized surgical techniques and capabilities. Remote surgery is possible. Microsurgery. Nanosurgery?

I remember building my robot for the MIT 2.007 (not the year, but the course #) Design and Manufacturing course. Every year, the contest changes. My year, a bunch of ping pong balls dropped out of the "Niagara falls" (it was called "Niagara Balls") and our robots had to collect those balls and place them in our bin. I had fun driving my robot around the table collecting balls and dropping them into my bin. I miss those MIT days.