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iRobot’s in-hospital robots to link doctors, patients
Military and consumer robot manufacturer iRobot Corp. in Bedford will unveil a new product Tuesday intended for the health care industry as it diversifies its product line in preparation for looming defense cuts.
The 5-foot-4-inch, 140-pound “telemedicine” robot will be produced in partnership with InTouch Health of Santa Barbara, Calif., a maker of in-hospital robots, and is designed to help patients with health emergencies get more rapid treatment from specialists — especially at night, when hospital staff levels are lower, the company said.
“Telemedicine is about getting the right expertise to the right place at the right time,” said InTouch chief executive Yulun Wang. “If a patient has a stroke and comes into the emergency room, you better get a stroke neurologist there quickly. Otherwise, through sheer delay, it can be a matter of life or death.”
Called RP-VITA, the robot allows doctors to virtually visit patients in distant locations, carrying on conversations and even taking measurements in real time. Equipped with cameras, microphones, 3-D mapping sensors, a stethoscope, and a video screen “head” that automatically swivels to listen to voices, the robot transmits and receives video, audio, and navigation instructions over a Wi-Fi broadband connection.
Doctors, patients, and hospital staff control the robot with a specialized terminal or via a software application that runs on Apple Inc.’s iPad tablet computer, and talk to one another using a Skype-like video chat displayed on the robot’s main screen.
“I can get data I never had over the phone,” said Dr. Jason Knight, a pediatric emergency care physician at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County in California, who has been testing a prototype of the robot. “There’s never been one time I’ve used it and said, ‘That was a waste of time.’ I always see something I wouldn’t have otherwise.”
In February, iRobot said it planned to widen its product range to reduce its dependence on defense contracts as the Pentagon executes plans to cut its budget by $450 billion over the next 10 years. The company, which also makes consumer products such as the Roomba vacuum robot, laid off 55 workers, or around 8 percent of its workforce, in October.
The RP-VITA incorporates a number of design advances, according to iRobot senior vice president Glen Weinstein. The robot can interact in real-time with heart monitors, blood oxygenation sensors, ultrasound machines, and other diagnostic tools, to give doctors on the other end of the connection access to patient data. And where earlier hospital robots were steered manually, or wheeled from room to room by staffers, the RP-VITA can navigate to learned destinations on its own, avoiding obstacles along the way. It will even give a wider berth to people than it does to inanimate objects, like furnishings, as it roams the hallways.
“The ability of our systems to work in a dynamic environment has only been mature for the last couple years,” said Weinstein. “From my perspective, this is the most sophisticated robot that’s been created. It’s really pulling together a significant amount of expertise that I don’t believe exists elsewhere in the world.”
The RP-VITA is scheduled to be released late this year, and will cost between $4,000 and $6,000 per month to lease, according to iRobot.
“From the patient perspective, the advantage is the rapidity. The faster you get a diagnosis and treatment, the better your outcome,” said Liz Boehm of ExperiaHealth, a patient experience consultant firm in San Francisco.
The use of telemedicine robots is still very limited, said Boehm, who said some of the benefits can be realized simply through using the Skype video service. But either way, she said, patients can expect to see a growing use of remote communications technology in medicine.
“For clinicians, the ability to be home more and not have calls be so onerous, that’s wonderful,” she said, “because the clinician is less likely to get burnt out by her job, and can give better care to more people.”
Source: http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012/07/23/new-robot-will-connect-doctors-patients/aYB9pBvEPnel8AUuxrL1zL/story.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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