Robot suit rentals in Japan for disabled, elderly reads brain signals to help move legs

“A robotic suit that reads brain signals and helps people with mobility problems will be available to rent in Japan for US$2,200 a month starting Friday — an invention that may have far-reaching benefits for the disabled and elderly.
HAL — short for “hybrid assistive limb” — is a computerized suit with sensors that read brain signals directing limb movement through the skin.”
Article
Mainichi Daily News, 7 October 2008

Hot technology that could change health care

“Advances in health care run the gamut from mind-boggling medicines to simple Web solutions that, if adopted, could slice huge slabs of fat from a bloated system. Whatever form innovation takes in the coming years, much of it will spring from start-ups, not pharma and tech giants.”
Article
Maureen Farrell, CBC News, 8 September 2008

Robots Dispense Drugs to Keep Us Safer

“An estimated 1.5 million drug errors take place each year in the US alone. If we do the math, that means the average number of medication errors made in the hospital is one error, per patient, per day.”
Article
Trisha Torrey, About.com, 23 June 2008

A New Generation of Assistive Technologies: the robot appliance for eating

The assistive robotic system are designed in order to improve the independence of disabled or elderly people, but some of them are under-utilized because of their technical complexity, high cost, poor usability, and poor mapping to user needs within home environment. This innovative system is a new eating robot appliance for high-level disabled and elderly persons that simultaneously considers the users’ requirements for a specific task within a specific environment in order to gratify users’ emotional, perceptive, and psychological needs.
The concept of “robot appliance” contains the idea of a task-restricted robot that is safe, low cost, modular, simple but effective in its task, suitable for use with various types of food and easy-to-use (flexible and accessible interface).
It is an assistive robotic system portable and re-configurable, i.e. it can be used in diverse settings such as on a dinner table or on a wheelchair. The feeder system is the integration and combination of two independent units which assist people with disabilities both in eating and drinking from a common plate and glass.

Giuseppina Anna Di Lauro
CEO DEDALO SOLUTIONS, President Club of Spin-off Companies, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

To be presented at the ICMCC Event.

Special WABT session at ICMCC Event

Empowering Disabled People with ICT Tools
organised by Prof. Giuseppe Tritto, President of the WABT (World Academy of Biomedical Technologies)

Session overview:

• Disability definitions and trends for e-Health policies and services
  Giuseppe TRITTO, President WABT (ICET/UNESCO), World Academy of BioMedical Sciences and Technologies, Paris, France
• Empowering Mr Green with ICT tools
  Malcolm Clarke, Senior Lecturer in Data Communication Systems and Telemedicine, Department of Information Systems and Computing, Brunel University, UK
• ICT for home-based service to maintain the upper limb function: a telerehabilitation experience
  Marco Rogante, Dipartimento Tecnologie e Salute (Technology and Health Dept.), Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italian National Institute of Health), Rome, Italy
• Research on a mechanically efficient sensing surface for information retrieval in healthcare.
  Peter Brett, Biomedical Engineering, Aston University, Birmingham, UK
• A New Generation of Assistive Technologies: the robot appliance for eating
  Giuseppina Anna Di Lauro, CEO DEDALO SOLUTIONS, President Club of Spin-off Companies, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa Italy

ICMCC Event Preview 1

This is the first of a series of blogs in which I will give a preview of the various aspects of the upcoming ICMCC Event.

The Monday morning has 2 parallel sessions.

Read the rest of this entry »

I, Doctor, er, Robot

“The robot will see you now. At least in the operating room, where more and more often robots stand between doctor and patients, the New York Times reports.
At many hospitals robots, under the control of doctors, are performing some of the precision work of prostate and gynecological surgery, for instance. In their favor, robots’ “hands” don’t shake, don’t tire and can make precise cuts in tiny places. Robots don’t care about X-ray exposure or need days off either.
But how well are medical robots complying with the Three Laws of Robotics as codified by the late sci-fi author and Health Blog hero Isaac Asimov? Let’s take a look at Intuitive Surgical’s da Vinci surgical robot, featured prominently in the NYT’s piece.”
Article
Scott Hensley. WSJ Health Blog, 5 May 2008

Prepping Robots to Perform Surgery

“What do you call a surgeon who operates without scalpels, stitching tools or a powerful headlamp to light the patient’s insides? A better doctor, according to a growing number of surgeons who prefer to hand over much of the blood-and-guts portion of their work to medical robots controlled from computer consoles.”
Article
Barnaby J. Feder, The New York Times, 4 May 2008

Mind Reading for Robotic Limb Control

“Japanese scientists are continuing to push for a cyborg future, as researchers at Osaka University are attaching electrode sensors directly to the human brain, to study how the electrical activity can be interpreted to operate mechanical devices.”
Article
MedGadget, 23 April 2008

New robots can provide elder care for aging baby boomers

“Sceptical about the potential of robots to deliver in-home care and eventually replace static telecare systems? You might not be so sure after reading this article and viewing this video.”
Article
Steve Hards, Telecare Aware, 21 April 2008

Personals Attitudes towards Robot Assisted Health Care – a pilot study in 111 respondents

Abstract:
Background: The aim of this survey was to examine health care professional’s attitudes towards technology involving support from artificial intelligence (AI), robots and humanoids. Within 10-15 years, every third student has to choose occupation within the health care sector to obtain the current personal level, due to the aging population and retirement within the health service sector.
Material & Methods: The preliminary investigation interviews presented a wide range of activities. These were nursing tasks, service tasks, monitoring/alarms, telemedicine and social communication. First, a five minutes presentation movie was presented. The movie demonstrated expected personal needs in the future and what robots and AI can do today and tomorrow. After this presentation, the 111 respondents, from different representative care institutions, replied on a questionnaire that dealt with selected areas identified above. The questions included different views of robots as supported aids in healthcare.
Results & Discussion: The respondents were overall negative using AI and robot technology related to caring activities. However, all groups were positive in using robots in service tasks, monitoring/alarms, telemedicine and social communication. Of 29 assertions, 18 were mostly positive and 13 of them were over 70 % positive. The frequency of positive and negative attitudes, were similar in the central areas. Within the caring area, a positive robot assisted task requires an interaction (collaboration): caregiver-robot-individual and subsequently, within the nursing area; robot assisted tasks must involve a certain degree of human caring.

Ola Göransson¹, Krister Pettersson¹, Pär A Larsson^1,4, Bo Lennernäs^2,3
1 Fyrbodal Research Institute, Uddevalla,
² Sahlgrenska Academy, Dept of Oncology, University of Gothenburg,
³ iRobis Vasaplatsen 2, 41134 Gothenburg,
⁴ Sahlgrenska Academy, Dept of Neuroscience and Physiology, University of Gothenburg,
All Sweden.

To be published in “Medical and Care Compunetics 5″, IOSPress, 2008.
To be presented at the ICMCC Event 2008.

Centre for robotic surgery opened in London

“A centre for robotic surgery has been created at Imperial College London with the aid of the Helen Hamlyn Trust.
The Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery will champion the integration of robotics into medicine and patient care, with the aim of developing advanced robotic technologies.”
Article
e-Health Insider, 27 March 2008

Postoperative Robotic Telerounding

“Hypothesis Patient safety and satisfaction are adversely affected when robotic videoconferencing (telerounding) is used in the postoperative setting.
Conclusions Robotic telerounds matched the performance of standard bedside rounds after urologic surgical procedures. Virtual visits did not result in missed or increased postoperative complications. Hospital length of stay and ratings of hospital satisfaction were on par with those for traditional rounding.”
Article
Lars M. Ellison, Mike Nguyen, Michael D. Fabrizio, Ann Soh, Sompol Permpongkosol, Louis R. Kavoussi, Arch Surg. 2007;142(12):1177-1181

‘Robin’, el ciberamigo sanitario

The Spanish Health Ministry and Microsoft have created a virtual person (robot) Robin, as a source of health and healthy behaviour information for youngsters between 15 and 24.

Article (Spanish)
Emilio de Bonito, El País, 10 January 2008

Robosoft showcase robot to help elderly

“French robotic specialist Robosoft has demonstrated a prototype service robot which can help elderly and handicapped people stay at home.
The robot, launched at Microsoft’s Innovation Day in Brussels at the end of 2007, is a home-centric robot, which combines the internet and robotics technology to provide daily-life services to people staying at home.”
Article
e-Health Europe, 9 January 2008

iRobi helper robot appears at CES 2008

“Amazing Robot…would be nice to have for seniors who need some assistance with small items..and just as a security system as well…but of course being able to transmit medical information would be huge…as I understand you pay for the devices and then for the services that are connected to the unit….watch the 2nd video below as the little guy sings too…BD”
Article
The Medical Quack, 8 January 2008

ROBOSOFT Introduces a New Robuter Aiming at Assisting People at Home

“The prototype shows how service robots can help elderly and handicapped people staying at home. It is based on robuLAB10, an off-theshelf mobile platform, and a robuBOX™, the generic robotic middleware based on Microsoft® Robotics Studio, that comes with every robot produced by ROBOSOFT: it allows providers of services to customize it and offer various services to their customers.”
Article
e-Health Europe, 2 January 2008

Robot helps doctors treat patients in rural areas

“Within moments of a request for medical consultation, a doctor seated at a computer control station — at her home or office in Louisville, an airport terminal or anywhere in the world that has a wireless connection — can connect via the Internet to the RP-7 Robot located in the OMHS Emergency Room.”
Article
University of Louisville News, 5 November 2007

Hands of Steel

“Keeping a ‘virtual eye’ on patients 24×7 might have appeared an impossible task at first thought, a decade back. But with the advent of robotics anything looks achievable. Robots have always caught the imagination of medicos to replace human tasks by a machine that can more accurately, efficiently, and rapidly perform a job. They can even improve surgical outcomes.”
Article
Sonal Shukla, Express Healthcare, October 2007

Robot-teacher in the operating room

Zukünftige Informationstechnologie für den Gesundheitsbereich

Which IT applications will be technically feasible in the healthcare branch by 2020?

“Die Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik ist für den Gesundheitssektor eine Schlüsseltechnologie für die Entwicklung neuer Produkte und Dienstleistungen. Im Rahmen von FAZIT wurde daher in einer Vertiefungsstudie die Relevanz und das zukünftige Potential der Technikentwicklung, gesellschaftlichen Akzeptanz und wirtschaftlichen Bedeutung von informationstechnologischen Innovationen für den Gesundheitssektor in Baden-Württemberg untersucht.”
Report
Kerstin Cuhls, Jürgen von Oertzen, Simone Kimpeler, Fazit Forschung, Schriftenreihe Band 6, May 2007

Are all possible IT innovations in healthcare desirable?

“From artificial kidneys to robots as nursing staff in hospitals, information technology (IT) is becoming increasingly important in preventive healthcare and the treatment of diseases. But not everything that is technically possible will also be accepted, say researchers from the German Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI).”
Article
eHealthnews.EU, 22 September 2007

ARMin: a robot for patient-cooperative arm therapy

“Task-oriented, repetitive and intensive arm training can enhance arm rehabilitation in patients with paralyzed upper extremities due to lesions of the central nervous system. There is evidence that the training duration is a key factor for the therapy progress. Robot-supported therapy can improve the rehabilitation allowing more intensive training. This paper presents the kinematics, the control and the therapy modes of the arm therapy robot ARMin. It is a haptic display with semi-exoskeleton kinematics with four active and two passive degrees of freedom. Equipped with position, force and torque sensors the device can deliver patient-cooperative arm therapy taking into account the activity of the patient and supporting him/her only as much as needed. The haptic display is combined with an audiovisual display that is used to present the movement and the movement task to the patient. It is assumed that the patient-cooperative therapy approach combined with a multimodal display can increase the patient’s motivation and activity and, therefore, the therapeutic progress.”
Abstract
Tobias Nef, Matjaz Mihelj, Robert Riener, Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing, Volume 45, Number 9 / September, 2007, 887-900

Developing a Telepresence Robot for Interpersonal Communication with the Elderly in a Home Environment

““Telepresence” is an interesting field that includes virtual reality implementations with human–system interfaces, communication technologies, and robotics. This paper describes the development of a telepresence robot called Telepresence Robot for Interpersonal Communication (TRIC) for the purpose of interpersonal communication with the elderly in a home environment. The main aim behind TRIC’s development is to allow elderly populations to remain in their home environments, while loved ones and caregivers are able to maintain a higher level of communication and monitoring than via traditional methods.”
Article
Tzung-Cheng Tsai, Yeh-Liang Hsu, An-I. Ma, Trevor King, Chang-Huei Wu. Telemedicine and e-Health. 2007, 13(4): 407-424

Optimisation Issues of High Throughput Medical Data and Video Streaming Traffic in 3G Wireless Environments

R.S.H. Istapanian and N. Philip
Mobile Information and Network Technologies Research Centre, Kingston University, London Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2EE, UK

Abstract:

In this paper we describe some of the optimisation issues relevant to the requirements of high throughput of medical data and video streaming traffic in 3G wireless environments. In particular we present a challenging 3G mobile health care application that requires a demanding 3G medical data throughput. We also describe the 3G QoS requirement of mObile Tele-Echography ultra-Light rObot system (OTELO that is designed to provide seamless 3G connectivity for real-time ultrasound medical video streams and diagnosis from a remote site (robotic and patient station) manipulated by an expert side (specialists) that is controlling the robotic scanning operation and presenting a real-time feedback diagnosis using 3G wireless communication links.