Article intro - Telerobotic Operation of Intensive Care Unit Ventilators
A recent pre-print paper by the Hopkins LCSR group reveals their efforts to improve the protection of HCWs at the COVID-19 wards by telerobotic technologies:
Vágvölgyi et al. Telerobotic Operation of Intensive Care Unit Ventilators.
Abstract
"Since the first reports of a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in December 2019, over 33 millionpeople have been infected worldwide and approximately 1 million people worldwide have diedfrom the disease caused by this virus, COVID-19. In the US alone, there have been approximately7 million cases and over 200,000 deaths. This outbreak has placed an enormous strain onhealthcare systems and workers. Severe cases require hospital care, and 8.5% of patients requiremechanical ventilation in an intensive care unit (ICU). One major challenge is the necessity forclinical care personnel to don and doff cumbersome personal protective equipment (PPE) inorder to enter an ICU unit to make simple adjustments to ventilator settings. Although futureventilators and other ICU equipment may be controllable remotely through computer networks,the enormous installed base of existing ventilators do not have this capability. This paper reportsthe development of a simple, low cost telerobotic system that permits adjustment of ventilatorsettings from outside the ICU. The system consists of a small Cartesian robot capable of operatinga ventilator touch screen with camera vision control via a wirelessly connected tablet masterdevice located outside the room. Engineering system tests demonstrated that the open-loopmechanical repeatability of the device was 7.5 mm, and that the average positioning error ofthe robotic finger under visual servoing control was 5.94 mm. Successful usability tests in asimulated ICU environment were carried out and are reported. In addition to enabling a significantreduction in PPE consumption, the prototype system has been shown in a preliminary evaluationto significantly reduce the total time required for a respiratory therapist to perform typical settingadjustments on a commercial ventilator, including donning and doffing PPE, from 271 seconds to109 seconds."
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