BERLIN--In the midst of America's raging debate on the future of health insurance, one man says he has a solution to out-of-control health care costs: more robots.
A prototype robotic telepresence "nurse."
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)Of course, this is coming from Colin Angle, a roboticist and CEO of iRobot, the company that makes both robotic vacuum cleaners and bomb-defusing gadgets currently in use by the U.S. military. At IFA here on Friday, he said that robotic telepresence devices, which would act like nurses in a person's home, could reduce the $2.2 trillion, or 17 percent of the U.S. GDP, currently spent on health care every year.
Angle insisted that when it comes to elderly people staying at home instead of moving to a nursing home, or a sick patients that don't need care such as surgery, "all of the things over time can be done with robots."
He's not talking about the kind of robot that the average person might think of, like Rosie from "The Jetsons" or Honda's Asimo. (In fact, Angle says those anthropomorphic style bots are "a technological marvel, but nearly, utterly useless.") Rather, the robotic nurses he has in mind look more like a machine than a man; more similar to the Roomba and Scooba household robots that Angle helped invent.
Instead of patients with chronic illnesses constantly going to a hospital for even minor treatments and checkups, a telepresence device could act as a proxy for the doctor to check in on them. The robot could examine, diagnose, and make sure a prescription is administered on the right schedule. The patient, in other words, wouldn't have to set foot in a hospital unless he or she needs care that is only available there.
The same model would cut the cost of nursing homes for aging people with a diminished ability to perform normal household tasks. In the future, robots are expected to be able to handle tasks such as daily medical reminders, cleaning the house, preparing food, and transportation.
The Roomba, from iRobot.
(Credit: Erica Ogg/CNET)While robots aren't cheap, neither are hospital visits. And Angle says he's encouraged by the money that people are already spending on home automation systems and devices. He says that half a million people in the U.S. last year spent between $2,000 and $3,000 each on equipment such as security monitoring services, and that in the next three years, that number will jump to over 7 million. In other words, the idea of spending money to keep an eye on things in your home isn't a totally foreign concept.
Skeptical about robot "nurses"? Angle says he's heard that reaction before. "Our biggest problem is that nobody believes robots work. It's like science fiction," he said.
The sales of Roombas and Scoobas, and the $35 million order that iRobot took from the U.S. Army earlier this week certainly aren't fictional, but there's quite a ways to go before robots can actually do all the things he has in mind. The company's first product, the Roomba vacuum cleaner, took 10 years to develop, while its iConnectr telepresence robot is limited compared to what he envisions for the future.
"That's a start," he said. "I admit we've only taken the first few steps."
An ordinary warehouse-style building in a nondescript office park in San Leandro, Calif., is home to some of the most futuristic and cutting-edge medical research in the U.S. It's where the Kaiser Permanente Sidney R. Garfield Health Care Innovation Center is located and testing out new technology, mock hospital environments, and high-tech gadgetry for the health care field.
Walking through mock hospital corridors with eco-friendly floors made from recycled materials are real patients, doctors, and nurses testing out the limits of technology. They're not only examining the impact of the rubber-based floor on their backs, but also other kinds of state-of-the-art gear invented to streamline and systematize the hospital experience.
From medicine-delivery robots to electronic medical charts wirelessly connected to all Kaiser's patients' data, it feels a bit like stepping onboard the Starship Enterprise. All gadgets are designed to be easily cleaned and some are gesture-controlled, so they don't even need to be touched. All cameras, both video and still, have extreme zoom for minute documentation. One camera's lens gets so close it can detail a thumbprint.
The Garfield Innovation Center also does work flow simulations where physical spaces and hospital routines are studied and standardized. These simulations are important because they help develop ways to maximize the quality of care for patients and the work-efficiency of health care providers.
All of the technology being developed and tested at the Garfield Innovation Center is in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Danielle Cass, a communications manager for Kaiser Permanente, says, "We are moving a lot of data and we have to make sure it's safe."
Join us for a tour of the facility through this audio slideshow (below) or a more traditional slideshow (teased above).
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Updated on April 2 at 7:45 a.m. PDT with additional information throughout.
General Electric CEO and Chairman Jeff Immelt and Intel CEO Paul Otellini on Thursday jointly announced an alliance to market and develop home-based health technologies to help seniors.
The technologies will help seniors live independently and help patients with chronic conditions manage their care from their home, the companies said.
GE Healthcare will sell and market the Intel Health Guide (PDF), a care management tool designed for healthcare professionals who work with patients with chronic conditions.
The market for "telehealth" and home health monitoring is forecast to grow from $3 billion in 2009 to an estimated $7.7 billion by 2012, according to GE and Intel.
Both companies will jointly invest a total of $250 million over the next five years for the research and product development of home-based health technologies.
Key elements of the announcement include:
- Global product research and development alliance
- GE Healthcare will sell and market the Intel Health Guide
- GE Quiet Care, which alerts caregivers to changes that may signal potential health issues
- Intel Health Guide to allow clinicians to monitor patients in their homes and manage care remotely
GE and Intel are involved in externally funded independent living and home health research programs. GE Healthcare is leading a consortium of private and public sector organizations in a $5 million three-year home health research program funded by the Hungarian government.
Intel and the Irish Development Agency have established a $30 million "Technology Research for Independent Living Centre," bringing together industry and academic experts to research independent living technologies.
In the United States the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics forecast that by 2030 approximately 71.5 million people will be 65 and older, representing nearly 20 percent of the total U.S. population, up from 37 million Americans in 2006, according to information provided by GE and Intel.
It's going to get easier for Google to keep tabs on your health.
The ubiquitous tech conglomerate has signed on to a new software product created by IBM with help from the Continua Health Alliance, an organization that promotes interoperability of medical devices. It'll take data from personal health monitoring devices, like blood sugar meters for diabetics, and share that directly with the patient in question's Google Health file (and the patient's physician, if he or she uses Google Health as well).
Other personal health record (PHR) services will also be able to use the IBM software, which was built partially on open-source standards.
"Our partnership with IBM will help both providers and users gain access to their device data in a highly simplified and automated fashion," Google Health director Sameer Samat said in a release. "IBM has taken an important step in providing software that enables device manufacturers and hospitals to easily upload recorded data into a PHR platform, such as Google Health."
Google Health, dedicated to the digitization of health records, launched in May. Microsoft has also planned a medical records service called HealthVault. President Barack Obama, meanwhile, has made it clear that he plans to make digital health records part of his health care reform agenda.
Starting on Thursday, residents of Hawaii will be able to pay a flat fee for a 10-minute online visit with a doctor.
(Credit: American Well)For people in Hawaii, going to see the doctor just got as easy as booting up their PC.
The state is the first to offer online physician visits statewide, under a program that kicks off Thursday. Residents can chat with a doctor over a standard Web browser (IE 7 or Firefox 2) or carry out their visit over the telephone. Those with a Webcam can also use that to share video with the doctor. The service will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week (with a few monthly maintenance outages during low-volume times).
Members of Hawaii's largest insurer, HSMA (which operates the state's Blue Cross and Blue Shield) pay $10 for the 10-minute consultation, while non-members pay $45.
The launch comes as the modernization of health care is taking center stage. A Senate working group is scheduled to hold hearings Thursday on the topic, with Microsoft Vice President Peter Neupert among those offering testimony.
Hawaii passed a law in 2006 that paved the way for Thursday's launch. The legislation led HMSA to look for ways to implement online health care, a search that eventually led the company to Boston-based American Well. The two companies have been working together since last June, along with Microsoft, whose HealthVault system is supported to allow patients to maintain their own health care records.
Proponents of the system caution that while it may help reduce the number of people going to emergency rooms for routine off-hours ailments, it isn't a substitute in true emergencies.
Doctors in the system are told to apply the same standards of care and address only the kinds of things that can be handled over the phone or Web. Doctors are allowed to issue prescriptions for most medications, but in some cases will not be able to offer a definitive diagnosis within the 10-minute visit.
Family practice doctor Michelle Shimizu, who has been among the doctors helping test the system, said she sees opportunities for handling things like glucose monitoring, discussing lab results as well as for unplanned queries.
"That doesn't necessarily need to be done on a face-to-face basis." Shimizu said. At the same time, she doesn't see traditional visits going away.
"I don't think this situation can completely replace one-on-one doctor's visits," she said. "It's an adjunct to that."
She's found another use for the system. Shimizu, who is in the process of moving her practice from Oahu to the Big Island, said the online option will allow some of her current patients to keep seeing her without having to hop on a plane.
In general, doctors receive $25 for each online visit they handle. They can use the Web to schedule unused time as it becomes available. Doctors, like patients, need only a phone or a PC to participate.
"The $25 has been received tremendously," said HMSA marketing Vice President Michael Stollar. "They think the fee is very fair," he said, noting that many offer phone or e-mail follow-up today without getting paid at all.
For now, the company expects doctors to mainly use the service to fill their spare time, though he said that he can imagine a day where a new medical school graduate might choose to set up an online-only practice.
Roy Schoenberg, the CEO of American Well, said that making better use of physicians' downtime fills a critical need. "There are not enough primary care physicians," he said. "It really allows us to capture 'care opportunities' out of the same number of physicians that were out there."
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(Credit:
Lucasfilm)
OK, the whole Star Wars thing? A little misleading.
Basically, the Herald Sun is reporting on a technology that involves firing a laser beam accurate enough to puncture a hole in an individual cell. Sounds more like The Authority--or any other Mark Millar-written comic--than Star Wars to me.
Anyway, Professor Kishan Dholakia and Dr. Frank Gunn-Moore--both of the University of St. Andrews in Scotland--say the "light saber" could be used routinely on cancer patients within the next five years.
The method would allow chemotherapy drugs to be pumped directly into cancer cells. The researchers believe hard-to-reach cancers such as that of the pancreas would especially benefit.
The researchers have managed to mount the light syringe on an optical fiber the width of a human hair. The next step is to develop it for use on endoscopes, the tubes used by surgeons to pass miniature cameras through the body.
"You could think of these as tiny light sabers like they had in Star Wars inside your body," Gunn-Moore said.
"We can use lasers to punch tiny holes exactly where we want them," he continued. "We can produce a rod of light--sometimes described as a sword--that can even go around objects. It really does sound like science fiction."
So not really "Star Warsian," exactly, but mentioning Star Wars has surely led to better coverage of the team's research. But hey, if more coverage leads to more funding, then more power to them.
Scientists at the University of St Andrews in Scotland have developed a novel form of syringe, formed solely from light, that they hope will deliver highly targeted chemotherapy drugs.
(Credit: University of St Andrews)
Employees at the Cheetah Conservation Fund's Biomass Energy Project use tech to convert bush into blocks of clean-burning fuel.
(Credit: Biomass Energy Project, Cheetah Conservation Fund)A group working to save land in Namibia, projects bringing power to Indian villages and building earthquake-resistant homes in Indonesia, the maker of a single-use syringe, and a group that uses technology in classrooms in India were the winners of the Tech Museum awards held Wednesday.
The Biomass Energy Project, Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia won the 2008 Intel Environment Award. The group converts invasive bush into clean fuel. It employs 15 people at a biomass processing plant that uses a high-pressure extrusion process to create an economically viable alternative to firewood, coal, and charcoal. The fund is working to recover 25 million acres of land in Namibia and to save endangered cheetahs.
DESI Power: Decentralised Energy Systems India won the 2008 Accenture Economic Development Award. DESI Power is helping more than 100 villages build power plants to areas that lack electricity and is creating jobs with the launch of micro-enterprises. The DESI plants use 19th-century technology--biomass gasification through agricultural waste.
A completely different type of invention took the prize for education. Described as the educational equivalent of Netflix + YouTube + Kazaa, the peer-to-peer file-sharing system Digital Study Hall won the Microsoft Education Award. The Lucknow, India-based project records classroom lessons from experienced teachers on DVDs and distributes them to underprivileged classrooms in India and Bangladesh. Students participating in Digital Study Hall scored nearly 400 times higher on English tests and nearly 300 times higher in math.
The Katherine M. Swanson Equality Award was given to Build Change, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that designs and trains builders and homeowners how to build earthquake-resistant houses in developing countries. The designs use local materials, and are affordable and sustainable, as well as easy to build. In Aceh, Indonesia, alone, Build Change has strengthened 4,200 homes and trained 130 builders. The group also has programs in West Sumatra, Indonesia, and Sichuan, China.
Winning the Fogarty Institute for Innovation Health Award is Marc Koska who developed a syringe that reduces the spread of disease because it can only be used once. The plunger in the K1 "Auto Disable" Syringe developed by Star Syringe locks in place when it is fully depressed, preventing it from being used repeatedly, a common cause of cross-infection among patients in the developing world. The single-use syringes save millions of people from getting infected with Hepatitis B and C and HIV.
For more information about the K1 syringe and four other Tech Awards laureates, read "Tech Museum honors tech that benefits humanity".
Digital Study Hall students benefit from watching lessons on DVD in their underprivileged classrooms in India and Bangladesh.
(Credit: Digital Study Hall)Philips Research is out with a new intelligent camera pill that can be electronically preprogrammed to deliver targeted doses of medicine to patients with digestive disorders such as Crohn's disease, colitis, and colon cancer.
Don't worry, this is not a life-size representation of the tiny Philips iPill.
(Credit: Philips)The device comes in the form of an 11 mm x 26 mm capsule that patients swallow with water, just like any other pill. It's designed to pass through the digestive tract of its own accord, meaning you just let nature take its course with this one.
The iPill determines its location via a pH sensor that measures the acidity of the environment, which varies throughout the intestinal tract. The device then releases medicine from its drug reservoir via a microprocessor-controlled pump--either in a burst or a progressive release. Philips says the smart pill can also deliver medicine to multiple locations.
Announced at the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists' annual meeting and exposition this week in Atlanta, the capsule is also designed to measure data such as local temperature, and report measurements wirelessly to an external receiver unit.
While its drug delivery system appears promising, the Philips iPill is not the first camera pill to enter the picture. Among other such products, GivenImaging created the PillCam Colon Capsule Endoscope for viewing the colon, as well the PillCam ESO for the esophagus and the PillCam SB for the gastrointestinal tract.
(Credit:
Liu, et al. ©2008 IEEE, via physorg.com)
It's a problem we all face at some point: parents or grandparents start to get wobbly as they get older, followed by the inevitable falls and broken bones from which they frequently never fully recover. A team of Virginia Tech researchers has recently completed a study of the efficacy of pants with strategically placed sensors to determine the likelihood that a particular individual will take a tumble.
In a nutshell (you can read the abstract at IEEE Xplor, but the paper itself will be behind a paywall when it's published), Liu, Lockhart, Jones, and Martin from Virginia Tech's e-Textiles Lab determined that placing accelerometers at the ankle and hip to measure variations in vertical acceleration and angular velocity can identify gait irregularities that presage falling.
The idea is that you sew these "e-Tags" (e-Textile Attached Gadgets) into a pair of pants, tie them into a home automation or health-monitoring system, and grandma can live independently for a few more years without you hovering over her all the time. (For good, comprehensive coverage of the technology, pop over to physorg.com.)
On one hand, this seems like a nifty idea. But several potential roadblocks to adoption seem inevitable. For instance, people usually know when they're unsteady or prone to falling; they generally don't want other people to know. And think about the ways health insurers could abuse potentially use the information.
Furthermore, how can you get the gizmo to provide a useful early-warning system? By the time the info gets signaled back, either you've hit the ground or you haven't. Sending a little shock through the system to tell the wearer, "Pay attention!" probably wouldn't fly, either.
The new Intel Health Guide--which collects vital signs and allows for remote interactions between patient and doctor--may soon make its way into the homes of consumers with chronic health conditions such as diabetes and congestive heart failure.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the medical device, Intel announced Thursday.
The 8-pound in-home gadget connects caregivers and patients outside of hospitals or clinic settings. It manages vital-sign collection, patient reminders, educational content, and motivational messages. The device has a 40GB hard drive.
The Intel Health Guide can read vital signs wirelessly and hold two-way video conferences.
(Credit: Intel)Information collected by the device is sent to the health care professional, and from there, physician and patient can engage in video conferencing to discuss health issues. Doctors monitor and remotely care for their patients via an online interface using software called the Intel Health Care Management Suite. It currently runs on Windows XP only.
With the ability to hook up to wired and wireless monitors, such as glucose or blood pressure gauges, a caregiver can schedule times to remotely measure vital signs, or patients can check their own. The encrypted information is sent to a remote database, as long as the device is connected to the Internet via broadband.
"This is an important product that will improve the state and cost of health care around the world," Louis Burns, vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Health Group, said in a statement. "We envision a wide range of usage models, not only chronic conditions such as CHF and diabetes, but also programs for health and wellness management at home."
The Intel Health Guide PHS6000 received FDA clearance to enter the market after years of development and research, including pilot studies in the United Kingdom and the U.S. Intel said it expects the product to be commercially available from health care providers by late 2008 or early 2009, with no price currently stated.
Intel joins several other companies in fusing technology and health care devices. Recently, IBM announced it could diagnose osteoporosis with a supercomputer. Other devices, such as an in-car system that measures glucose levels of diabetics and an implant that measures radiation in cancer patients, have also been developed.
