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Baltimore Hospital Using Robot to Help Doctor Perform Rounds From Remote Locations

Posted on: Thursday, 23 February 2006, 21:00 CST

By KAREN BUCKELEW

Patients at Sinai Hospital in Northwest Baltimore love visits from Dr. Alex Gandsas - especially when his head is mounted on a robot.Not his actual head, of course. It's just the image of his face that appears on the flat screen monitor affixed atop the 5- foot-5-inch robot that Sinai leased from a California company last month.The so-called rounding robot, so named because it enables physicians and surgeons to perform rounds from remote locations, is one of just two in use at Maryland hospitals, according to the manufacturer. The Johns Hopkins Hospital has leased the other device for the past two years.The machine allows doctors to log on via an Internet connection at home, in their offices or at other locations in their hospitals and physically roll the robot to a patient's room. Doctors can speak with patients using the technology, see them well enough to evaluate body language or wound condition, and even move around their beds for closer looks.Gandsas, head of Sinai's Division of Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery, began using the device Jan. 29. So far he is the only physician in the hospital to do so

. The current robot is being used as a sort of pilot program to analyze how useful and cost effective the machines are.This reduces the gap between doctor and patient, Gandsas explained. That gap is represented by the [physician's] inability to be there all the time. With this device, you transport yourself to the patient regardless of where you are on the planet. Patients love it.The robots are manufactured and distributed by InTouch Health, of Santa Barbara, Calif., a 4-year-old firm. It produces two models of Remote Presence Technology: the RP-7, used by both Sinai and Hopkins; and the RP-6.The company offers two-year leases on the machines for $5,000 a month, plus $5,000 to purchase each remote viewing station. Buying a robot runs about $150,000, plus the $5,000 per remote station. In the United States, 25 hospitals use the devices, and many own or lease more than one. About 10 hospitals overseas use the robots in countries including France, Turkey and the United Kingdom.The machines ensure that patient care is continually moving along at the right pace rather than having patients kind of waiting for doctors to get there during the day, said InTouch spokeswoman Courtney Knight. They can help with things like length of stay in the hospital.For Gandsas, whose patients often are obese people undergoing complicated weight-related surgeries, the robots allow him new flexibility in patient care. In the middle of the night he can jump out of bed at home and log on for a few minutes to make decisions that ordinarily would have to wait until morning - like scheduling emergency surgery - or evaluate himself the condition of a surgical patient rather than leaving the task to another doctor unfamiliar with the patient's history.But it's the benefit to the patient, Gandsas said, that really moves him to understand the power of telemedicine.The most important thing is the psychological impact from the patient standpoint, he explained. You want your doctor to be there, you really want your doctor. You feel much more reassured when you can talk to him or her rather than the doctor on call.A 2004 Hopkins study on InTouch's machines found that 57 percent of patients whose doctors used the robots would be comfortable if they were used in their future care.An added bonus, Gandsas said, is the reaction on the faces of patients and their visiting family members when the robot rolls into the room. Other doctor's patients have insisted he visit, he admitted, enthralled by his mechanical friend.They're demanding the robot, he laughed. It's a novelty.

Source: The Daily Record (Baltimore)

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