The University of Cincinnati (UC) https://www.uc.edu has invented a telehealth drone to improve access to medical services regardless of location. Inventors Victoria Wangla-Anderson, Manish Kurmar, Seung-Yeon Lee, and Debi Sampsel from UC, are developing a semi-autonomous protype to be dispatched directly to people’s homes.
Drones are big enough to carry medicine or medical supplies but small enough to maneuver the tight confines of a home using navigational algorithms developed by UC engineers, Still in development, the drone has cameras and a display screen so patients can talk to the healthcare professionals from the comfort of their homes. The prototype carries a waterproof box the size of a small first aid kit to deliver medical supplies or to collect self-administered lab tests.
According to Professor Kumar, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the CDS Lab https://ceas.uc.edu and Co-Director of the UAV MASTER Lab in UC College of Engineering and Applied Science, “Most drones rely on controllers that work on radio communication and require line-of-sight for safe remote operation. That is why most drones have limited operational range so if you want to go beyond line-of-sight control, you need autonomous capabilities.”
As Professor Kumar explained, “The lab has been working on autonomous systems that combine AI with a suite of sensors to allow drones to navigate in a cluttered and complex three dimensional environment.”
Debi Sampsel Director of Telehealth at UC’s College of Nursing https://nursing.uc.edu reports that seven years ago they were exploring using telehealth robots to help people live independently. The logistics and communications needed to perform tasks remotely made her think about ways that telehealth delivery could be improved to reduce healthcare disparities regardless of where people live.
The researchers in UC’s College of Nursing, were able to secure a UC Office of Research grant to develop a prototype to test the feasibility of dispatching a telehealth care delivery drone to a patient’s home to provide health assessments and/or provide medical interventions.
Wanda-Anderson, a Professor of Health Informatics in UC’s College of Allied Health Sciences https://cash.uc.edu, reports that telehealth drones could survey public health conditions in neighborhoods to identify effective interventions, assess living conditions, or to provide a substitute for in-person care during a pandemic.