Robotic telepresence - a healthcare professionals' perspective

preview CMTF/TFE 1 Robotic telepresence a healthcare professionals' perspective Annica Kristoffersson, Silvia Coradeschi, Maria Linden and Amy Loutfi Orebro University, Center for Applied Autonomous Sensor Systems, Orebro, Sweden Malardalen University, Division of Intelligent Sensor Systems, Vasteras, Sweden 1. firstname.lastname@oru.se, 2. firstname.lastname@mdh.se Introduction: A subset of telemedicine which focuses on telepresence enables visitation and consultation of healthcare professionals directly at the patient's home. The health professional may be embodied by a mobile agent, for example a mobile robot running a videoconferencing software thereby enabling the ability to move in another environment through teleoperation. Devices as shown in Figure 1, are motivated by the added benefit of placing low requirement to the end patient they may move about and behave as if receiving an actual visitor. Further, by observing a patient in his/her natural environment diagnosis regarding gait, stability, and well-being can be easier ascertained. While studies [1] have focused on navigational and interface aspects, it is important to assure acceptance from users and particularly the healthcare professionals such as nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, doctors and more. In this work, we perform a user based evaluation of a specific telepresence technology called the Giraff, and focus on the response from healthcare professionals. Specifically, we focus on the response from students who within a 3 year time span will work in the field. These trials are the beginning of a longitudinal study where the aim is to follow the same user group and probe their opinions towards technology and telepresence at regular intervals throughout their career development. Method: Trials have been performed at the School of Health and Medical Science at Orebro University. Each trial focused on a specific group of teachers or students. The groups, and the number of respondents in parentheses, were: teachers at the Nursing program (22), future Nurses (79), teachers in health subjects (such as occupational therapy and audiology, 12), future Occupational therapists (25) and future Audiologists (11). The total number of respondents were 149. Each trial begun with a short introduction in smart home environments and continued with a film showing the Giraff. After which a questionnaire was filled by the respondents. The majority of the questions were to be answered on a Likert scale from (1) I fully agree to (5) I do not agree at all. The questions concerned the use of technology, opinions about the Giraff system and possibilities to integrate new sensor technology on the Giraff. Figure 1 A table over opinions about the use of sensors and a picture of the Giraff platform. Results and Discussion: All groups see the use of computers as a natural ingredient in their daily work. They also believe the use of computers will increase in the future. Based on the video viewing, all groups were asked if they considered the system to be useful. Here the mean answer varied from 1,81-2,88 with the future nurses and future occupational therapists being the least positive. When asked questions about integrating sensors on the Giraff, the results varied between teachers and students. Figure 1 shows the results between Nursing teachers and Nursing students. Overall the teachers are more positive towards sensors than the students. One possible explanation is that students have less experience than the teachers about the possible utility of sensors and which sensors technologies exist. Teachers had ideas of other sensors that could be integrated such as blood sugar, skin moisture, weight, frequency of breathing and oxygen saturation while few students suggested integration of sensors mainly fall detectors and alcometer. Indeed, the difference between teachers and students responses is interesting and supports the aim of a longitudinal study with the same user group. References (1) Michaud F., Boissy, P., Labonte D., Corriveau H., Grant A., Lauria M., Cloutier R., Roux M.-A., Iaunnuzzi D., Royer M.-P. Telepresence Robot for Home Care Assistance, Proceedings of AAAI, 2006.