Physicians at the University of California-Davis currently are participating in a multi-hospital clinical trial to evaluate outcomes for patients treated by specialists in a remote location using an innovative robotic device, the Sacramento Bee reports. The device, dubbed “Rudy” by UCD staff, is manufactured by Santa Barbara-based In-Touch Health and uses wireless technology that allows physicians working in their offices or homes to examine patients in the hospital. Using a remote workstation, physicians can direct Rudy around the hospital and use the robot’s built-in digital camera and monitor to conduct patient exams and consults. An earlier evaluation of the device at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore found that when the robot as “added to the usual postoperative care,” patients who interacted with the robot were more satisfied than those who did not; in the current study, patients still receive in-person visits from nurses and resident physicians, but face-to-face interactions with specialists are replaced with visits via Rudy. Some critics have expressed concern that the device, which costs $3,000 a month to operate, could “alienate hospital patients” and “make medicine even more impersonal,” but In-Touch officials say the robot is designed to “make highly skilled people more accessible to more patients” in an era of health care provider shortages (Griffith, 8/17).
