Doctor Monitoring Via Robot Effective

Post-surgical patients monitored by physicians via a robot with video had similar complication rates to patients visited by a doctor, a U.S. study reveals.

Dr. Lars M. Ellison, previously with the University of California, Davis, and now at Penobscot Bay Medical Center in Rockport, Maine, and colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 270 patients undergoing a urologic procedure requiring a hospital stay of 24 to 72 hours.

Half the patients were randomly assigned to receive either traditional bedside rounds or robotic telerounds daily during their time in the hospital.

The robot consists of the motor base unit, a central processing unit, a high-definition digital camera, a flat-screen monitor and a microphone, the authors wrote in a statement. Data to and from the robot is transferred over a high-speed wireless network and is integrated with proprietary software. The physician connects remotely to the robot via a base station.

The study, published in the Archives of Surgery, found 16 percent of the patients in the standard round group and 13 percent in the teleround group developed complications, while patient satisfaction was equally high in both groups.