New robotic intubation device
"With nearly 25 million intubations performed each year in the U.S., and at least 1 percent ending in failure, there is a pressing need for improved technology. So a team of Ohio State engineers began working with Dr. Hamdy Awad, an anesthesiologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and associate professor in the College of Medicine. In addition to emergencies, patients need intubation when under general anesthesia to maintain an open airway during surgery.
Encouraged by common interest and motivated by a healthcare problem in need of a solution, Bailey and Awad formed an interdisciplinary team including engineers, industrial designers, students, physicians, and Ohio State’s Technology Commercialization Office, which recently helped the inventors file a patent application. The team set out to develop a robot that would intubate patients with greater accuracy by using more than human vision as a guide, thereby reducing or eliminating the number of failures and other problems in airway management. An autonomous device also increases the likelihood that first responders and military personnel could intubate during medical emergencies. Having just completed proof of concept testing, their robotic endoscopic device is propelled by an electric motor and controlled by a small computer. The device receives three-dimensional information about its anatomical location by means of a small speaker placed on the skin near the patient’s laryngeal prominence—Adam’s apple—emitting sound and magnetic waves detected by accelerometers and magnetic fields, respectively."
Other intubation robot projects are known as well. Also here, at McGill.
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Robots and Device Solutions