14 News, The Tri-State's News and Weather Leader-UofL doctors use robots in treatment of infants
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By Lori Lyle - bio | email
Posted by Charles Gazaway - email
LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - Medical robots are helping Kentucky doctors decide when newborns need more specialized care and when they do, many are brought to Louisville. In hospitals across the state, pediatricians are no longer just discussing symptoms with UofL's neonatologists; they're showing them the symptoms with live video.
As the large robot looking device moves closer to one of the babies in University Hospital's NICU, a face appears on a computerized screen, positioned where you'd think the robot's head might be. It's the face of Dr. Tonya Robinson and she asks the nurse in the room, "Can you hear me?"
Robots like it are now staffing nurseries in smaller hospitals across the state, giving pediatricians in those outlying hospitals, unprecedented access to the specialized care provided by UofL's 15 neonatologists, one of them Dr. Robinson. She says they often contact the team here because, "they want to run things by us, and this way, it increases the level that we can help them by actually seeing the patient."
As the robot moves closer, those in the nursery not only see her on the screen, she too is able to see them, and zoom in specifically on the babies in question.
She says the most common concerns are babies with respiratory problems, which can be tricky to describe with a phone conversation. In fact she says, "What you may be perceiving that doctor telling you and what the baby may be doing can be quite different. The ability to see how the chest is moving, you can actually hear the baby work the breathing, maybe doing some grunting and how heavy a grunting that might be." She is also able to review tests like chest x-rays with the robots camera capabilities.
Having this ability is making care for struggling newborns much easier says Robinson, when you consider that in most basic nurseries unlike University Hospital, "they wouldn't even have a ventilator, or if they used a ventilator, would be temporary, until transport got there."
Now, deciding on if transport is needed can be quicker and more certain. While you want to transport babies in need explains Robinson, you don't want to transport a child that can be managed where they are.
Hospitals on line so far with UofL's neonatologists are in Glasgow, Campbellsville, Lebanon and Owensboro. UofL doctors are also using the robots and telemedicine in the care for stroke patients, cardiology and even dermatology, an area suffering with doctor shortages across the state.
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