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Robotics Medicine Technology

A Man Diagnosed With Wuhan Coronavirus Near Seattle Is Being Treated Largely By a Robot (cnn.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD from the remote-control dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The first person diagnosed with the Wuhan coronavirus in the United States is being treated by a few medical workers and a robot. The robot, equipped with a stethoscope, is helping doctors take the man's vitals and communicate with him through a large screen, said Dr. George Diaz, chief of the infectious disease division at the Providence Regional Medical Center in Everett, Washington. "The nursing staff in the room move the robot around so we can see the patient in the screen, talk to him," Diaz said, adding the use of the robot minimizes exposure of medical staff to the infected man. It's unclear when the patient will be released because the CDC, which is set to provide the discharge details, has recommended additional testing. "They're looking for ongoing presence of the virus," Diaz told CNN on Thursday. "They're looking to see when the patient is no longer contagious."
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A Man Diagnosed With Wuhan Coronavirus Near Seattle Is Being Treated Largely By a Robot More

A Man Diagnosed With Wuhan Coronavirus Near Seattle Is Being Treated Largely By a Robot

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  • It's just a cold/flu virus, well understood, this seems more like over-the-top grandstanding / testing out new equipment.

    • Re:It's Not The Andromeda Strain... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Saturday January 25, 2020 @08:25AM (#59654882)

      If you are the one going into the room, are you that certain too? But sure, they probably have been waiting for an opportunity to use this stuff for years, in this case you can at least realistically say that they don't know for sure how contagious it is. It's a good moment to put some of these protocols and devices into action to see how they work out in real life.

    • Got any link for that? The link says he got tested for the virus, so it's not a normal cold. That virus is more deadly than that.
      • The common flu is deadly also. Look it up. Google for how many people die from the flu each year. 12,000 to 61,000 in the US.
        • That's mostly old people who wouldn't live that much longer. Though I don't know how many it is for this disease.
          Anyway, if we could stop a flu outbreak at its source I think we should do it, that's what is tried here. If it is justified depends on the percentage of infected people dying or getting long term damage, maybe it's too early to tell

        • The common flu is deadly also.

          No; being unhealthy with a disfunctional immune system is deadly. The common flu is business as fucking usual.

    • Re:It's Not The Andromeda Strain... (Score:5, Informative)

      by fazig ( 2909523 ) on Saturday January 25, 2020 @09:14AM (#59654964)
      I think you're conflating a couple of things here.

      A "cold" is just an umbrella term for a viral infection specifically of the upper respiratory system. It can be caused by various different viruses.
      The most common virus type that cause a cold is the rhinovirus. Other viruses that can cause similar symptoms but can be a lot more dangerous than your rhinovirus are the coronavirus and the influenza viruses.

      With test we can distinguish between these viruses.

    • One person managed to infect 14 healthcare workers. You know the people who usually wear protection from such things.

    • It's just a cold/flu virus, well understood

      Well understood by who? Not by the epidemiologists who are freaking out over it, and I suspect they know a little bit more about this kind of thing than you do.

      You could prove me wrong by posting your credentials as an infectious disease researcher. I'll wait.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rossdee ( 243626 )

      Yeah the Andromeda Strain had a 97% fatality rate within a minute of exposure.

  • Like other newcomers to an establishment, nation-state, or organization, robots will be welcome in the in the trades no one else wants to do.

    The upside is huge for millions of tasks, including treatment of infectious disease, and eventually off-planet exploration... unless they become sentient.

    • eventually off-planet exploration... unless they become sentient.

      Yeah. Someone should send a robot to another planet to explore it. That would be so cool.

  • Remember the SARS virus when most of the population died? This is even worse. The only solution is nuclear strikes on affected areas.

    • Ayup - when watching the news, it is clear that billions died. There was only one single lonely Chinese survivor from the SARS outbreak and he is very busy now, trying to build a new hospital in only six days.

    • The only solution is nuclear strikes on affected areas.

      How about nuclear strikes on those who attempt to be profound yet fail fucking utterly?

    • Bunch of ignorant ingrates (Score:5, Informative)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Saturday January 25, 2020 @03:36PM (#59655900)
      SARS had a case fatality rate of about 11% [wikipedia.org] or higher [who.int]. That is, 11% of the people who got it died. For comparison, the 1918 flu which killed 50-100 million people (not all directly from the flu, many from complications due to overwhelmed medical services) only had a case fatality a rate of about 2.5%. The reason SARS didn't become a pandemic catastrophe which made the 1918 flu look like just a bad hangover was because of the work of health organizations and epidemiologists to contain it before it could explode. Put it this way: There's probably about a 3%-5% chance that you are alive today because of their work to contain SARS before it became a global pandemic.

      They're being super-cautious with the Wuhan coronavirus because so far it's had about a 3% case fatality rate. Not as bad as SARS, but worse than the 1918 flu. The case fatality rate for your typical strain of influenza is less than 0.1%.
      • I would like to refer you to: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandem... [cdc.gov] "It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States. Mortality was high in people younger than 5 years old, 20-40 years old, and 65 years and older. The high mortality in healthy people, including those in the 20-40 year age group, was a unique featur

  • This combined with closing Shanghai Disneyland...isn't this how The Walking Dead started?

  • They're taking precautions by minimizing the amount of face-to-face contact by using a telepresence robot. This isn't anything new or courageous, it's just being cautious with a deadly pathogen with no known treatment.

    On a humorous note, when doing a reverse image search using the image of the robot, Google labeled it both "Physician" [google.com] and "Patient" [google.com]. :)

    • But the awful part I think here is tgat tge doctor is safe in another room, but the lowly paid nurse is subjected to the patient in the room moving the robot...I think that's just awful (as it costs not much to have a remotely operated robot. Just shows the class society we live in...

    • On a humorous note, when doing a reverse image search using the image of the robot, Google labeled it both "Physician" and "Patient"

      Surprisingly accurate, since it is an interface.

  • BTW China may have closed all of its 70,000 movie theaters to combat the virus.
    https://www.cinemablend.com/ne... [cinemablend.com]

  • Popping up across the planet (Score:3)

    by spinitch ( 1033676 ) on Saturday January 25, 2020 @10:00AM (#59655070)
    If / when this virus hits a harder to control area like larger cities in Asia / India it could get very deadly. Quarantine helps let the others not yet infected move about and keep society going. Robot assistance advancement is encouraging to help with quarantine.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Mashiki ( 184564 )

        For all the medics out there, what kills a man with viral pneumonia? Is it toxic shock, or lack of oxygen?

        Well it's a lack of oxygen technically, but what happens is you drown due to fluid build up.

        What OTC supplies should stores be stocking up on now (medicine, bottle of oxygen, etc) should this pandemic hit hard and fast? Because lord knows the ER and other health care facilities will be swamped.

        Nothing will really matter beyond what you can limit from exposure. They're now considering that it's being carried by asymptomatic carriers, which means the person could be infected, spreading, and not having an increased temperature or coughing/sneezing. Best options are the same options you'd get with a serious bout of the flu: fluids, rest, eat what you can. Stuff like pedialyte or non-caffeinated 'energy' dri

        • They're now considering that it's being carried by asymptomatic carriers, which means the person could be infected, spreading, and not having an increased temperature or coughing/sneezing.

          This is expected with a coronavirus; many infected patients will only experience the common cold. They won't have an elevated temperature, and they might not have a noticeable level of coughing. It will only be perceived as having cleared their throat, and now it is on their their hands and they're smearing it around. Plus, the drier the cough, the smaller the particles, resulting in longer float times in the air. And a mild dry cough might not be perceived as a cough.

          If they smoke cigarettes, they're cough

      • So, no more eye-licking parties?

  • He _is_ a good boy.

  • nursing staff "move" the robot? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can't wait until they invent a way to move robots around using remote control.

    So this robot is really to protect the Doctors from contact and not the nursing staff and really sounds like a quick hack.
    Doesn't that sound strange that they use the nursing staff to move the robot around?

  • The bigger question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Saturday January 25, 2020 @11:50AM (#59655346)

    Is why people from Wuhan were even allowed through customs.

  • Canada has telepresence robots in medicine (Score:3)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Saturday January 25, 2020 @12:58PM (#59655462) Homepage

    We've had those in parts of Canada for a decade. They help when patients who need to see a doctor have to travel by ferry or on land for several hours or even a day to the nearest hospital.

    Instead they go to a nearer clinic and the doctor talks to them via a screen, with the nurse helping onsite.

    Here is a CBC article from 2010 [www.cbc.ca].

  • The word of the day is "nosocomial" meaning a disease you catch inside a hospital.

    Doctors are uncertain how the Wuhan coronavirus is spread. The human-to-human transmission of SARS might have spread in hospitals due to diarrhea or from other bodily fluids besides the expected aerosols.

  • IN ROBOT VOICE: That is not why I am here. You will need to pull up your pants, thank you.

  • I know this one - *It's not a robot* it is a tele-health communications cart. You place it in a room so someone in a central communications terminal can monitor many patients and has 2 way A/V comm with all the patient. The nurses are still going in and out, way less because the patints comm with central communications. It is not self propelled or actuatedd in any way, and as far as I know has no stethoscope. They likely have the patient in a telemetry room that is already wired for BP, rhythm, resp, an

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