SAN ANTONIO — Staff Sgt. Juan Amaris laid in intensive care
recovering from life-threatening burns when he got a peculiar visit
from his doctor. Dr. Kevin Chung — rather, a 5-foot-tall
camouflage-clad robot with Chung's face on a monitor — rolled in to
check on him.
With his proxy's cameras zooming and wireless
antennas beaming, Chung stood in a kitchen in Virginia and examined
Amaris from 1,500 miles away, providing a connection between doctor and
patient even as Chung was on vacation.
Use of the robot began as
an Army telemedicine pilot project several years ago. But its success
in allowing Chung to check on patients while deployed and in training
nurses far away means the Chungbot — as it's been nicknamed around
Brooke Army Medical Center — is here to stay.
"It became so clinically useful, it was no longer a research tool," said Chung, who oversees the Army's only burn ICU.
Using
the robot allows Chung to examine wounds and interact with the patient,
though someone else at the bedside takes vital signs and provides
hands-on care at the doctor's instruction.
The robot arrived at
Brooke three years ago after Chung sought grant funding to lease the
device. Since then, he's checked on patients via robot from as far away
as Baghdad.
One badly wounded soldier was brought here after
Chung and others treated him in Iraq, and the staff in Baghdad wondered
how he was doing. Instead of calling for an update from a doctor here,
Chung was able to log in and roll the robot over to the patient with
the Baghdad staff looking on.
"This patient was very, very sick. To be able to see that this patient was breathing was powerful," he said.
The
robot is controlled with a laptop and joystick and wirelessly transmits
images and sound between doctor and patient. Two camera lenses and
antennas sit above the screen. Sensors along the bottom keep Chung from
running the robot into walls and warn him when someone is approaching
it from behind.
About 250 similar robots are being used by
civilian hospitals, primarily to connect satellite facilities with
specialist doctors, said Jennifer Niesse, a spokeswoman for InTouch
Health, the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based manufacturer. Most are leased,
and she declined to say how much they cost.
The Chungbot recently
began a rotation as a trainer, allowing deploying nurses from
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to get more specialized burn
injury training at a patient's bedside. Chung said without the robot,
some trainees might have flown in, but many would have been forced to
rely on photos and more basic instruction.
Since the arrival of
the Chungbot, other military doctor-bots have been tried at Madigan
Army Medical Center in Tacoma, Wash., for laproscopic surgery training,
and at Ryder Trauma Center in Miami for remote trauma consultations.
The results have generally been good but decisions on long-term use
have been left to local hospital commanders, said Col. Ron Poropatich,
deputy director of the Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology
Research Center.
Chung said the robot doesn't replace real-life
interaction with patients and won't eliminate the need for specialists
deployed to hospitals in war zones, but it can provide extra access.
"It's not going to replace real presence. It extends your capabilities," he said.
Even
if the robots were widely used in field hospitals, severely wounded
soldiers would continue to be transported to major military medical
facilities with specialists for treatment, but Chung noted that much of
the work done by Army doctors and nurses involves treating wounded
civilians, who aren't typically transported.
Consultations with
specialists in those cases are often done over the phone, leaving the
specialist without the ability to see the patient and injury —
something that could change with this type of technology, he said.
Many
of Chung's patients at Brooke have been too sedated to interact through
the Chungbot, but overall, family and patient responses have been
positive, he said.
Amaris, who suffered third-degree burns over
three-quarters of his body in a Mosul fuel truck explosion, said his
Chungbot encounter was definitely strange, but good.
"You never
see no stuff like that," said Amaris, a 27-year-old originally from
Colombia. "It shocked me when (Chung) said he was in Virginia."
Amaris'
wife, Jazmin, did a double-take when she saw the robot rolling down the
hall with two soldiers following behind. But she said it was reassuring
to see Chung, who had been overseeing treatment of her husband's
disfigured arms and scarred upper body, even from a computer screen
atop a robot.
"You feel more calm. You see so many doctors, so many people every day. It was really important to see him," she said.
