iRobot's Robot Doc Is Ready To Heal You

SkinnyGuy tips news that patients may soon be getting diagnosed with the help of a 5'4", 140lb assistant going by the name of RP-VITA. The 'Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant' was unveiled this week by iRobot (the company behind the Roomba vacuum bot) and InTouch Health, and it allows doctors a way to remotely gather data. "It may be controlled via joystick, but RP-Vita does have some awareness of its environment. It employs a dazzling array of sensors that include PrimeSense Sensors (the same ones you find in the Kinect for Xbox 360), two cameras that together approximate normal human vision, sonar and a laser range finder. It also creates a map of the hospital and knows the location, for example, of its roll-into charging base." RP-VITA is currently waiting on FDA approval for use inside a hospital, which its creators expect by the end of the year.

Comments

INSERT COIN

[longbot]

...Or more likely, "pass credit card / insurance card through slot".

Depressing

[markdavis]

Sorry, but to me this is just depressing. We already have to lots tons of money to wait forever to see a LIVE doctor who can barely be bothered to listen or treat before flying out of the room to the next patient. So this is just want we need- make the experience even that much less functional, colder, and more remote.

At this rate, I would do better to just sit at home, Google up all my symptoms and treat myself. Or at least just take my own vitals and video conference with a doctor. Then at maybe I can skip the hour wait in the freezing waiting room with people coughing on me, kids screaming, and a TV blaring on some stupid reality show (or worse, some "public health message loop").

Sorry for the rant, just have not had a lot of good experiences with doctors or doctor offices over the last few years.

Re:Depressing

[Anonymous Coward]

The United States is enamored with the idea that technology will -- somehow, someday -- fix our broken health care system. It won't, and it can't. It's a profoundly social problem.

Re:Depressing

[ceoyoyo]

This isn't to replace GPs. It's so that smaller hospitals can benefit from some of the things that a large hospital can offer.

As an example, suppose you're walking along and suddenly have trouble speaking. Your significant other / friend / whatever is concerned and takes you to your small local hospital. The doctors at that hospital suspect you're having a stroke, but no specialized stroke neurologist works there. So they call one, who examines you using the robot. He determines you are having a stroke, and imaging confirms it is ischemic. Since it's within the three hour window, he orders a local nurse to give you an IV injection of tPA, a clot busting drug. She does, monitors you, and you improve.

Without the robot you would have to have been transferred to a larger hospital to see someone qualified to order tPA treatment, and by the time that happened it might well have been outside the three hour window.

Call center doctors

[Animats]

Probably gets you some doctor in a call center somewhere.

Re:Call center doctors

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's our turn to outsource and this time it's the Doctors. They've priced themselves out of the market.

So true. And their phone booths are nowhere in sight when you actually need one.

Re:Call center doctors

[artor3]

Most insightful comment so far. This is exactly what it will be used for.

And the middle class will die some more, and quality of life will decline some more, and the rich will become that much richer and better off by comparison. Which is, ultimately, what it's all about.

Re:Call center doctors

[pixr99]

Medical credentialing makes it difficult to off shore this type of work. A hospital would have to send each doctor who might "see" patients through their state's credentialing process before they could cover a shift. This is time consuming and is especially difficult since, to make the economics of this attractive, these "doctor call centers" would need to have a bunch of docs... possibly all of which may need credentialing if the possibility exists of them seeing your patients.

In a small rural hospital, devices like this would be used to provide specialty or sub-specialty services that the hospital wouldn't normally be able to offer its community since it's tough to get a cardiologist (or whatever) to move, along with his/her spouse, out to the sticks.

Trust a super sized Roomba with our health?

[ToadProphet]

My damn Roomba still can't manage to finish a floor without being foiled by a chair.

Oblig

[SrLnclt]

Please state the nature of the medical emergency.