Drugs, kids, and robots seem an unlikely mixture. However, robotics are helping kids through the stress of doctor visits, helping hospitals dispense medications more accurately, and standing in for a surgeon’s hands.

MEDi is yet another of those cute robots that interact with people. You’ll find him in medical settings where his specific task is to be a companion to children, educate them, and be a pain coach. He’ll greet a child as they come for a vaccination or other injection. He explains the procedure saying that the alcohol swab the nurse uses to clean their skin at the injection site “feels wet like a puppy licking your arm”. You can see the interaction between MEDi and a child in their YouTube segment.

MEDi is child height, slightly less than two feet tall. His 25 degrees of movement, eight pressure sensors, nine tactile sensors, two cameras, and four directional microphones make his interactions lifelike. To distract and entertain, he tells stories, plays games and dances. Together with built in cognitive behavioral skills, the robot is clinically proven to reduce children’s pain and anxiety by 50 percent. His explanations help kids understand and anticipate what a procedure will entail.

MEDi dances to entertain, but mostly to keep a child’s mind off a medical procedure they may be undergoing.

Rx Robots says their mission is to transform pediatrics through robotics. The Canadian based company first put MEDi to work at the Alberta Children’s Hospital. MEDi’s programs are specific to various medical procedures, such as blood tests or vaccinations. The MEDi Kits which contain an NAO Robot, a battery pack and charger, choreographe software and applications can be ordered individually. The University of Calgary with Setareh Aghel Manesh, Tanya Beran, Ehud Sharlin, and Saul Greenberg are credited with MEDi. Beran was providing information and demonstrating their little guy at CES 2015.

Robots have been used in medical settings for some time. The first in 1985 was PUMA 560 which performed a neurosurgical biopsy. It had only six degrees of movement controlled by six brushed DC servo motors. In 1990, the FDA (Federal Drug Administration) got into the picture, approving the AESOP system  for an endoscopic surgical procedure.

More recent is the da Vinci robot typically used in cardiac valve repair, hysterectomy, and prostatectomy procedures. The surgeon controls the robot remotely from a console. Interactive Surgical, the company behind da Vinci, claims that its 3D high definition vision system with magnification up to 10, special instruments, and computer software help the surgeon operate with enhanced vision, precision, dexterity and control. However, their website warns that “Patients should understand that risks of surgery include potential for human error and potential for equipment failure. To emphasize the potential problems, in 2013 the company recalled the da Vinci units because of defective Hot Shears where cracks allowed electrosurgical energy to leak to patient tissue.

Robotic equipment helps with drug inventory and dispensing as well. Robot-Rx, not to be confused with the child-focused Rx-Robots, is an automated medication dispensing system. Medications are placed in envelopes or cassettes with bar-codes that links to the computer record of the patient. It updates the drug inventory as prescriptions are filled.

Medicines are stored and dispensed via bar code to the related patient by Robot-Rx.

The vault-like appearance of this robotic system which stores as well as dispenses drugs is far removed from MEDi, the cute humanistic robot.

The Robot-Rx complex stores, dispenses, and inventories medications.

McKesson Corp. sold their hospital pharmacy automation unit Robot-Rx over a year ago to the newly named Aesynt Corporation. The system runs under Windows 7 and provides real time inventory control as well as bar code medication administration.

Whether addressing kids, drugs, or surgery, robots are here to stay in the field of medicine and health care.

The post Robots, Kids, and Drugs appeared first on VR World.

Here is the daily roundup from Japanese consumer tech and tech business websites for Dec. 18, 2014.

Bandai Namco to change its official name

Major game video game publisher Bandai Namco Games announces that it will be changing its official name to Bandai Namco Entertainment.  The change will be officially implemented on the 1st of April next year.

The decision for the corporation’s rebranding was officiated by Bandai Namco Holding’s board of directors today, along with the company’s decision to expand the business beyond video game publishing and out towards the general entertainment industry. A total number of 20 other company subsidiaries will also be rebranded in accordance to this decision, and will also be effective starting today.

HP rolls out new PC and notebook lineup in Japan

HP Japan finally reveals its new product lineup of notebook and desktop PCs. The new models will be available starting this week.

The notebook lineup includes the HP Omen 15 high-end gaming notebook PC and the entry-level HP Stream 11.  Both models will be available in Japan at a base price of $1,680.00 and $220.00 respectively. For its desktop lineup, HP offers the HP Envy 700, HP Pavillion 500, and the HP Pavillion Slimline 400. The HP Envy 700 will be available with a base price of $760.00, while the two other models will be available at $500.00.

Toshiba develops new heavy ion radiotherapy scanner

Toshiba unveils its newest 3D medical scanning technology, in the form of a next generation heavy ion radiotherapy scanner. It was first unveiled last week during the JASPRO 2014 event.

Designed for respiratory-gated imaging and superconducting rotating gantries, the new 3D scanner was built with the purpose of allowing much faster scanning than most other 3D scanners. It was co-developed by Japan’s National Institute of Radiological Sciences, and was in steady development for at least three years since 2011, burgeoning several prototypes and other similar technologies before arriving to its latest iteration.

The company is now planning to commercially develop and release its 3D scanning technology to other countries.

The post Bandai Namco, HP PC, Toshiba Scanner: The Headlines in Japan for Dec. 18 appeared first on VR World.

The University of California, Irvine (UCI) School of Medicine yesterday announced that they would be incorporating Google Glass into their 4-year curriculum. The School, including dean of medicine, Dr. Ralph V. Clayman, stated that they would introduce Google Glass at the beginning of the students’ 4-year medical programs and would incorporate it into the first two years of anatomy and clinical skills training to their third and fourth-year hospital rotations. The hopes are to help integrate technology more effectively into a student’s overall daily life and to enable them to become more productive and effective in delivering quality care. The school claims that they will be using specialized software that will comply with the HIPAA requirements for privacy, even though I’m not entirely sure if that’ll actually be entirely possible.

While the idea of integrating Google Glass into the medical field seems incredibly great, Google needs to enable these med students and the hospitals they’ll be working in to be able to properly warehouse all of the data within the hospital’s networks. This may be difficult because Google Glass makes heavily utilization of Google’s voice recognition software, almost all of which is running in the cloud. Yes, there is a way to enable cloud-less voice recognition but it is vastly less accurate and less responsive, which means these schools like UCI need to cooperate with Google to install local hardware to enable this to properly comply with HIPPA. However, they will probably get an exemption since they are using this for testing and will likely help Google and others find ways to balance technology, usability and privacy.

If you go to a lot of doctor’s offices today, you can still see how low-tech a lot of things still are and it would be incredibly valuable to help bring technology into the doctor’s office with something like Google Glass that enables a vast amount of data to be at a Doctor’s fingertips without actually restricting their hands.

Starting this month, they will deploy 10 pairs of Google Glass with 3rd and 4th year students with preliminary plans to utilize them in operating rooms and emergency departments. In fact, the technology has already been piloted by UC Irvine’s Medical Center in operating rooms, intensive care units and the emergency department to assess its effectiveness in improving physician efficiency and patient safety. In addition to that, an additional 20 to 30 pairs of Google Glass will be acquired and deployed in August when 1st and 2nd year students start their 4-year programs. The devices will be incorporated into places like anatomy labs, medical simulation centers, the ultrasound institute the Clinical Skills Center and even the basic science lecture hall.

One of my biggest concerns about deploying Google Glass widely across a place like UCI is how patients will receive the devices as some people simply worry about being filmed or having their picture taken even though Google Glass is mostly used for things other than that. It will be interesting to see how wearables mature further and how technologies like Google Glass find their way into the medical field.

The post UCI Incorporates Google Glass into Med School Program appeared first on VR World.