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Humans can sometimes view robots with apprehension or resentment at the increasing automation of labor, but the coronavirus pandemic is showing how the two can work together in new ways that could save lives during a crisis. Around the world, robots and other technologies, such as drones and telehealth devices, are being used in a variety of settings and capabilities to aid in the COVID-19 response, as there is a high level of risk for workers. humans.
Automated devices have meals delivered to quarantined travelers in a Chinese hotel; forced curfews in Tunisia; Scanned visitors for fevers entering a South Korean hospital monitored patients in a heavily affected Italian city; and tracked the fulfillment of social distancing from the heavens in various cities around the world, including Elizabeth, New Jersey.
“In a disaster, you don’t add completely new things. It takes years to build reliable systems.”
Many of the technologies were commercially available before the coronavirus outbreak, said Texas A&M University professor Robin Murphy, who studies how robots can be deployed during But now, “disasters are being used 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and are tailored to meet the needs of those who use them,” Murphy added. “In a disaster, you don’t add completely new things. It takes years to build reliable systems.”
Murphy and his colleagues are tracking how drones and ground robots have been deployed during the coronavirus outbreak. “The most common uses we are seeing right now are public safety, quarantine, and hospital disinfection,” said Murphy.
A robot helps medical teams treat patients suffering from coronavirus disease in a patient’s room in Varese, Italy, on April 1, 2020. Photo by REUTERS / Flavio Lo Scalzo
This is not the first time that robots have come to attention during an infectious disease outbreak. During the Ebola epidemic in West Africa between 2014 and 2016, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Science Foundation convened workshops with scientists and researchers that outlined three areas where robotic systems could prove useful in future outbreaks. of global health: clinical care, logistics and recognition. More recently, an international group of leading robotics specialists, including Murphy, wrote an editorial in the journal Science Robotics and identified a fourth promising area, work continuity and maintenance of socio-economic functions, based on the enormous financial impacts of the current crisis. For example, they suggested that more research should be done on remote operation of key sectors of the economy, “from manufacturing to remote operation of waste or power treatment plants.”
But, the authors concluded, there has been insufficient funding for robotics research related to infectious diseases in recent years. “Without sustained investigative efforts, the robots will, once again, not be ready for the next incident,” they wrote.
In general, robots and similar technologies are expensive to buy and maintain, which often limits their widespread use. According to Murphy, an important conclusion from the current outbreak is that, when available, robots can be used effectively to support front-line workers, not to take away their jobs. “They can perform tasks that a person could not do, or do safely, and they can take on tasks that free responders to handle the heaviest workload,” Murphy said.
However, integrating robots and other new technologies into existing healthcare workflows can present significant obstacles. That’s a problem that Oregon State University robotics professor Bill Smart has been studying. “If you go into a hospital, nurses, doctors, even housekeeping, have a routine that they are very comfortable with,” Smart said. “If I put something that you’re not familiar with in that environment, in that workflow, then the chances of something going wrong are high. And if something goes wrong, someone could die.”
Funded by the National Institutes of Health, Smart has been collaborating with Doctors Without Borders (Doctors Without Borders) to learn how robots could help reduce infection risks for front-line healthcare workers.
Graduate students Austin Whitesell and Alan Sánchez and Bill Smart, professor of robotics, demonstrate an experiment that simulates how robots can be used during Ebola outbreaks. Photo from Oregon State University.
“I think the trick with robots, with any technology, is to choose your battles,” said Smart. “Robots are not good at everything. It’s finding out what they’re good at and accomplishing that without interrupting the workflow.”
If, in the future, we begin to rely more on robots that interact with patients, Smart says her research shows that it’s important to remember that people need human contact and connection during their recovery. “I think one of the main job functions of a nurse is not just to provide clinical care, but to make eye contact, to be a human point of contact,” said Smart. “You don’t want to lose that by putting a robot in the room. But if you had to put a robot in there, I think it’s really important that the robot conform to the social cues we do as humans.”
Here are two ways that robots are being used to protect people in the United States now.
Patient care
Robot-like technology, backed by a human face, helped provide care for the first patient in the US USA In being diagnosed with the COVID-19 virus. The 35-year-old man, who had recently returned from Wuhan, China, was treated in late January at the Providence Regional Health Center in Everett, Washington. Dr. Todd Czartoski, director of medical technology for the Providence healthcare system, said teams of care providers had been practicing and developing protocols to treat highly infectious patients since the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
The hospital had purchased, both internally and from an outside company, cars with high-end audio and visual connections that allowed doctors and nurses to remotely communicate with the first patient with COVID-19 and others afterward. The carts are also equipped with a digital stethoscope and other tools to assist the medical team.
Czartoski says technology has not replaced in-person care, but it has reduced the number of times that medical personnel need to enter patient rooms. The change means they could keep something that is in short supply across the country these days: personal protective equipment. “We have been able to demonstrate that by implementing telehealth devices in these rooms, we could reduce the use of personal protective equipment by 50 percent,” said Czartoski.
Disinfect hospitals
Before the coronavirus outbreak, there had been a huge push to reduce the number of hospital-acquired infections that kill tens of thousands of Americans each year.
Several companies around the world, including San Antonio-based Xenex Disinfection Services, have developed UV disinfection technologies that are taking on a significant new role in keeping healthcare facilities and other public areas clean during the current crisis. .
“I think the trick with robots, with any technology, is to choose your battles.”
Dr. Mark Stibich, an epidemiologist who is a co-founder of Xenex, says studies conducted before the current outbreak showed that in hospitals where LightStrike is used, “we typically see a 45 percent reduction in infection rates, down to 80 percent and better. “
Because ultraviolet light can be harmful to humans, cleaning personnel are not in the room when the robot is operating, and there are automatic shutdown sensors if human movement is detected. During the current outbreak, Stibich says many hospitals are using the robot to disinfect rooms before cleaning staff comes to change sheets and do other regular cleaning jobs. The robot is used again a second time before a new patient enters the room.
The LightStrike is currently deployed at more than 500 healthcare facilities worldwide, including the Mayo Clinic, 70 Veterans Health Administration hospitals, and 10 Department of Defense hospitals. Last week, the company announced that LightStrike was recently tested on live SARS-CoV-2 virus at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, rather than substitute viruses that have been approved by the FDA for disinfection purposes. According to a company press release, the robot destroyed the virus in two minutes.
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