In an innovative attempt to mitigate the mental health issues of COVID-19 patients, the Yatharth hospital in Noida Extension has come up with a robot to help in counselling of patients.
The robot named ‘Mitra’ connects the infected patients, who have been under treatment at the hospital away from their families, with their loved ones on video calls. The calls are made using the screen on the body of the robot, The Times of India reported.
Dr Sunil Kumar, medical superintendent at Yatharth Hospital, was quoted by TOI saying, “Mental health is an important aspect of the COVID-19 treatment and so we decided to start the service. There is a screen on the robot and through this, psychiatrists speak to patients and answer their queries. As most Covid hospitals do not allow phones inside the ICU, the robot can also make video calls and connect patients with their families.”
‘Mitra’, designed and developed by Bengaluru-based start-up Invento Robotics, is stationed at the Yatharth hospital’s entrance. The robot also helps in the initial process of symptom-checking. It asks visitors about symptoms and screens their temperature. In cases when all relevant statistics are normal, it prints an entry pass with the screening result, name and picture of the visitor.
The hospital procured two ‘Mitra’ robots for Rs 10 lakh each and deployed one at its Noida Extension branch and the second at the Sector 110 facility. The latter has now been shifted to the Sector Omicron 1 hospital to screen about 500 OPD patients and relatives of IPD patients on the daily.
The hospital’s non-Covid branches in Sector 110, Noida, and Sector Omicron 1, Greater Noida, have a similar robot, which is used to screen patients for influenza-like illnesses (ILI), the report added.
Earlier, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), too, had brought in robots in the Covid-19 facilities in Delhi and Jhajjar. The robots were being used for contactless monitoring of patients.
Comments
0 comment