Is Healthcare Automation a Need During a Pandemic?
Published on : Sunday 12-07-2020
Automation and robotics assist to facilitate services, ensure safety, and drive efficiencies, even when the staff and supplies are limited in hospitals and clinics.
Considering the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare sector witnesses critical recourses in terms of treating and serving the patients. The growth in nation-wide cases of coronavirus positive patients primarily results in increased hospitalization rates across the globe. The rapid increase in the wide number of cases is creating a shortage of hospital beds, ventilators, and officials to provide care service. Various healthcare experts stated the use of automation and artificial intelligence integrated robotic solutions are expected to make the impact by streamlining workflows and helping reduce clinician stress due to this pandemic. In addition to this, these automated technological solutions are cutting the number of up-close interactions that could prompt coronavirus exposure by automating and coordinating unique care tasks brought about by the pandemic. The healthcare officials also stated that the use of AI is at the early stage and it is expected to expanding and exploding in the coming years.
Robots based on automated technologies are used to assists triage patients
The incorporation of robots based on automated technologies is primarily aimed to meet concerns that people might have about the virus, its symptoms, and their care options. Many operational sites for the virus are investing in the development of such technologies to meet the demand in the application area. Such development includes chatbot robots, drug, and food delivery robots, and testing care robots.
For instance, the launch of Partners HealthCare COVID-19 Screener by Providence St. Joseph Health through based on online screening and triage tool principle. This AI-based chatbot is used to present patients with questions based on information provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Mass General Brigham experts to rapidly differentiate between possible COVID-19 cases and less threatening ailments.
“As we prepare for a potential surge in patients with COVID-19, it’s not just patient rooms and supplies that may become limited, but also a physician and staff capacity. So, it’s tremendously helpful to have tools that allow physicians who are not as experienced as radiologists in reading X-rays to get a quick idea of what they’re looking at, especially frontline emergency and hospital-based physicians.” – Dr. Christopher Longhurst, CIO, and associate chief medical officer for UC San Diego Health
Integration of AI to Powers Streamline Clinical Decision Making
Global healthcare systems witness high growth inefficiencies owing to the use of AI algorithm based robotic technology to aid their clinical decision making process.
For instance, UC San Diego Health collaborated with the cloud service providers to integrate AI technology in the robots to identify through unique lung X-ray images in order to assist hospital personnel to identify early signs of pneumonia in COVID-19 patients. This robotic gadget was primarily trained by the experts with over 22,000 notations by human radiologists, overlays color-coded maps on X-ray images to demonstrate pneumonia probability.
AI-based robots are making it easier for hospitals to create corona positive cases. These robots have an ability to perform the initial tests and based on AI it will further proceed for the healing procedure.