Shaw Submits NIH R21 Application

Shaw Submits NIH R21 Application

Kudos to Ryan Shaw and his entire team for the resubmission of their NIH R21 application entitled "Toward Telerobotic Nursing." This proposal requests funding for a two-year period with a start date of July 1, 2018. 

During disease outbreaks, such as the Ebola epidemic of 2014–2015, and with highly infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, there is significant risk and potential impact of patients spreading disease to other patients and healthcare personnel. Similar concerns exist for environmental disasters including nuclear and sever air pollution, among others. Healthcare workers are at particularly high risk for infection or negative health effects due to routine interaction with patients, handling of and exposure to contaminated materials, and challenges associated with safely removing protective gear. Moreover, if healthcare workers become infected or exposed they not only leave a gap in care delivery, but also they risk transmitting diseases to other patients and co-workers within and outside care delivery settings. Thus, new tools are needed for reducing the exposure of healthcare workers to pathogens that may be carried by infectious patients that not only reduce the likelihood of pathogen transmission but allow for adequate care delivery. Robotics is a promising approach to address these challenges.

Via NSF seed funding, our team developed a first-generation prototype of such a system, named the Tele-Robotic Intelligent Nursing Assistant (TRINA), and tested it successfully in a hospital simulation lab. From a safe location, a human nurse can log on to TRINA to communicate with patients and other workers via audio/video communication, navigate around obstacles, bring food and medicine, operate equipment, and move carts and furniture. This proposal aims to build off these preliminary results to raise its technological readiness to the stage of in-situ clinical testing.

 

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