A new robot “medic” can undertake key frontline medical tasks in high risk emergency environments, British engineers have announced.
The robot, developed in Sheffield, UK, can give pain relief injections and check temperature, blood pressure and heart rate.
Developers envisage the device undertaking triage in disaster or war zones.
Its two robotic arms can also carry out a palpation of the abdomen, developers say, enabling initial assessment to be performed within 20 minutes.
They now hope to integrate their MediTel systems into a large-scale integrated medical emergency platform.
Professor Sanja Dogramadzi, professor of medical robotics at the University of Sheffield, said: This project has allowed us the opportunity to develop a platform that could be used by multiple emergency response services. It now serves us with the basis for our research to be extended and look into enabling resilient autonomy and integrating other sensing modalities to assist patient triage in other remote settings.”
David King, head of digital design at Sheffield’s advance manufacturing research centre, said: Our MediTel project has demonstrated game-changing medical telexistence technology that has the potential to save lives and provide remote assessment and treatment of casualties in high-risk environments such as humanitarian disasters.
“Developing and field testing a state-of-the-art, complex system such as MediTel in just nine months has been an incredible achievement and a testament to the skills and capabilities of the entire project team.”
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