VARESE, Italy (Technology) – A nurse has been making its way around a hospital in Italy without wearing a mask yet saving lives from coronavirus.
A little bit of a variation to the flesh-and-blood doctors and nurses, the robot nurse Tommy help look after coronavirus patients at Varese, Circolo Hospital in the epicentral region of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy.
Doctors in the hospital say that having Tommy on board is like having another nurse on board without an additional worry of infection.
The robots are of child-size with large blinking eyes and are wheeled into rooms to be left at the bedside of the patients. This leaves doctors to leave the rooms to look after patients under more serious conditions.
The robot nurses can keep a tab on the parameters from equipment in the patients’ room to be relayed to hospital staff. Their touchscreen faces allow for patients to send messages they record to doctors.
These robot nurses limit the hospital’s direct contact that doctors and nurses have with patients which in turn reduce infection risk.
So far, over 4,000 health workers in Italy contracted coronavirus as they treat patients in Italy. 66 doctors have died so far.
The robots aid the hospital limit protective masks and gowns numbers that the staff have to use, which are becoming a scarce resource. The mask shortage has been one of the biggest problems that the national health system has been facing since the contagion surfaced.
Tommy and his fellow robot nurses are also not subject to exhaustion. A quick battery change and they can head back to work in the ward.
(Photos syndicated via Reuters)
This story has been edited by BH staff and is published from a syndicated field.