Unmet Need
During infectious disease outbreaks such as the recent coronavirus pandemic, patients often require life-sustaining medical equipment for care in the hospital setting. Infection control is both a priority and a challenge within the hospital setting due to increased infectious sources, susceptible patients, and chances for transmission (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016). When clinical care personnel need to adjust equipment or enter this environment, they must follow safety precautions and infection control procedures that require donning personal protective equipment (PPE) to reduce potential risk of infecting themselves and other patients in the hospital unit. This can be time consuming for the care personnel and difficult in times of PPE shortages (Cohen, 2020).
Ideally, all intensive care unit (ICU) equipment might be interfaced to computer networks and operated remotely from a central control station, so that ICU personnel would only need to enter the room for tasks that require direct patient contact. Unfortunately, the vast majority of current ICU equipment do not have this capability and implementing this infrastructure would take many years. Therefore, there is a strong need for a simple system that can be rapidly deployed for remote operation of equipment in infectious environments.
Technology Overview
Inventors at Johns Hopkins have developed a robotic system that can be mounted on or placed adjacent to existing medical equipment and controlled remotely by clinical care personnel. Equipment operators can view and interact with a live video of the equipment interface via touch screen, sending commands to the robot by touching where on the screen they would like the robot to interact. This invention utilizes an interface type with which care personnel are already familiar and reduces potential exposures without sacrificing acute and frequent control over the medical equipment.
Stage of Development
Proof of concept system developed and demonstrated on a ventilator.
Publication
N/A
