PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Sensing robot healthcare helpers being developed at SFU

The current pandemic highlights how remote healthcare robots currently being developed at SFU could be beneficial in the future

Sensing robot healthcare helpers being developed at SFU
2021-02-26
(Press-News.org) Robots that could take on basic healthcare tasks to support the work of doctors and nurses may be the way of the future. Who knows, maybe a medical robot can prescribe your medicine someday? That's the idea behind 3D structural-sensing robots being developed and tested at Simon Fraser University by Woo Soo Kim, associate professor in the School of Mechatronic Systems Engineering.

"The recent pandemic demonstrates the need to minimize human-to-human interaction between healthcare workers and patients," says Kim, who authored two recent papers on the subject - a perspective on the technology and a demonstration of a robots' usefulness in healthcare. "There's an opportunity for sensing robots to measure essential healthcare information on behalf of care providers in the future."

Kim's research team programmed two robots, a humanoid figure and a robotic arm, to measure human physiological signals, working from Kim's Additive Manufacturing Lab located in SFU Surrey's new engineering building. The robotic arm, created using Kim's 3D printed origami structures, contains biomedical electrodes on the tip of each finger. When the hand touches a person, it detects physiological signals, including those from an electrocardiogram (which monitors heartbeat), respiration rate, electromyogram (monitoring electrical signals from muscle movements) and temperature.

The humanoid robot can also monitor oxygen levels, which could be used to monitor the condition of those who develop severe COVID-19. The data can be viewed in real-time on the robot's monitor or sent directly to the healthcare provider.

Kim plans further development and testing of the robot together with healthcare collaborators. At this stage, the robots are capable of passively gathering patient information. But within the next decade, he says it's conceivable that healthcare robots fitted with artificial intelligence could take a more active role, interacting with the patient, processing the data they have collected and even prescribing medication.

Further study will also need to involve determining acceptance levels for this type of technology among various age groups, from youth to seniors, in a hospital setting.

INFORMATION:


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Sensing robot healthcare helpers being developed at SFU

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Agents of food-borne zoonoses confirmed to parasitise newly-recorded in Thailand snails

Agents of food-borne zoonoses confirmed to parasitise newly-recorded in Thailand snails
2021-02-26
Parasitic flatworms known as agents of food-borne zoonoses were confirmed to use several species of thiarid snails, commonly found in freshwater and brackish environments in southeast Asia, as their first intermediate host. These parasites can cause severe ocular infections in humans who consume raw or improperly cooked fish that have fed on infected snails. The study, conducted in South Thailand by Thai and German researchers and led by Kitja Apiraksena, Silpakorn University, is published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal Zoosystematics and Evolution. "Trematode infections are major public health problems affecting humans in southeast Asia," explain the scientists. "Trematode infections depend not only on the habit of people, but also on the presence of first ...

New tools find COVID patients at highest risk of mechanical ventilation and death

2021-02-26
BOSTON - Two novel calculators for predicting which patients admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 are at greatest risk of requiring mechanical ventilation or of in-hospital death have been developed and validated by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). In a study published in The Lancet's EClinicalMedicine, researchers describe how these models could enable clinicians to better stratify risk in COVID-infected patients to optimize care and resource utilization in hospitals faced with ICU capacity constraints. "Information that can accurately predict severity of the clinical course at the time of hospital admission has been limited," says senior author Rajeev Malhotra, MD, a cardiologist at MGH and investigator in the MGH Cardiovascular Research Center. ...

Exposure to diverse career paths can help fill labor market 'skills gap'

Exposure to diverse career paths can help fill labor market skills gap
2021-02-26
COLUMBIA, Mo. -- When Patrick Rottinghaus began college, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his career. He started out as an "Open" major while he explored possibilities. Today, Rottinghaus, an associate professor in the University of Missouri College of Education, is helping young people eager to find their place in the world by identifying their strengths and connecting them with careers that match their skillset, interests and personality. As the father of three children, including a daughter soon to enter high school, he wants to ensure they are equipped ...

Engineering the boundary between 2D and 3D materials

2021-02-26
In recent years, engineers have found ways to modify the properties of some "two- dimensional" materials, which are just one or a few atoms thick, by stacking two layers together and rotating one slightly in relation to the other. This creates what are known as moiré patterns, where tiny shifts in the alignment of atoms between the two sheets create larger-scale patterns. It also changes the way electrons move through the material, in potentially useful ways. But for practical applications, such two-dimensional materials must at some point connect with the ordinary world of 3D materials. An international team led by MIT researchers has now come up with a way of imaging what goes on at these ...

Republican and Democratic voters agree on one thing--the need for generous COVID-19 relief

Republican and Democratic voters agree on one thing--the need for generous COVID-19 relief
2021-02-26
Both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly favor politicians who support generous COVID-19 relief spending, yet remain deeply polarized over the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election results and former President Donald Trump's second impeachment. Meanwhile, political experts find that the former president's actions and those taken by congressional supporters in the aftermath of the election represent serious departures from American democratic norms. Those are among the most recent findings of Bright Line Watch, the political science research project cofounded by Gretchen Helmke, a professor of political science at the ...

New study highlights importance of context to physical theories

2021-02-26
A Swansea University scientist's research into the geometrical characteristics of a physical theories is highlighted in a new paper. Physicist Dr Farid Shahandeh said: "Imagine a physical theory whose explanation for the trajectory of an apple falling from a tree differs for Gala and Pink Lady. We know that the apple's variety has nothing to do with how it falls. A theory like this is overcomplicated. "Any seemingly unnecessary and nonsensical parameter like this adds context to a theory's description of a physical phenomenon. "Luckily, classical theories are not contextuality. But, we know that if we try to interpret quantum mechanics in classical terms, it becomes contextual, and consequently ...

Quantum quirk yields giant magnetic effect, where none should exist

Quantum quirk yields giant magnetic effect, where none should exist
2021-02-26
HOUSTON - (Feb. 26, 2021) - In a twist befitting the strange nature of quantum mechanics, physicists have discovered the Hall effect -- a characteristic change in the way electricity is conducted in the presence of a magnetic field -- in a nonmagnetic quantum material to which no magnetic field was applied. The discovery by researchers from Rice University, Austria's Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Switzerland's Paul Scherrer Institute and Canada's McMaster University is detailed in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Of interest are both the origins of the effect, which is typically associated with magnetism, and its gigantic magnitude -- more than 1,000 times larger than one might observe in simple ...

Considering disorder and cooperative effects in photon escape rates from atomic gases

2021-02-26
Whilst a great deal of research has studied the rates of photons escaping from cold atomic gases, these studies have used a scalar description of light leaving some of its properties untested. In a new paper published in EPJ B Louis Bellando, a post-doctoral researcher at LOMA, University of Bordeaux, France, and his coauthors--Aharon Gero and Eric Akkermans, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, and Robin Kaiser, Université Côte d'Azur, France--aim to numerically investigative the roles of cooperative effects and disorder in photon escape rates from a cold atomic gas to construct a model that considers the vectorial ...

Blood tests offer early indicator of severe COVID-19, study says

2021-02-26
When patients with COVID-19 arrive in emergency rooms, there are relatively few ways for doctors to predict which ones are more likely to become critically ill and require intensive care and which ones are more likely to enjoy a quick recovery. New Yale research could help them identify important early clues. In a recent study, researchers report that a series of biomarkers, or biological signals, associated with white blood cell activation and obesity can predict severe outcomes in COVID-19 patients. The findings appear in the Feb. 26 edition of Blood Advances. "Patients with high levels of these markers were much more like to require care in the intensive care unit, require ventilation, or die due to their COVID-19," said Dr. Hyung Chun, ...

New research finds exercise may help slow memory loss for people living with Alzheimer's dementia

New research finds exercise may help slow memory loss for people living with Alzheimers dementia
2021-02-26
PHOENIX, Arizona, February 26, 2021- Promising new research shows aerobic exercise may help slow memory loss for older adults living with Alzheimer's dementia. ASU Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation Professor Fang Yu led a pilot randomized control trial that included 96 older adults living with mild to moderate Alzheimer's dementia. Participants were randomized to either a cycling (stationary bike) or stretching intervention for six months. Using the Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognition (ADAS-Cog) to assess cognition, the results of the trial were substantial. The six-month change in ADAS-Cog was 1.0±4.6 (cycling) and 0.1±4.1 (stretching), which were both significantly ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Breakthrough brain implant from NYU Abu Dhabi enables safer, more precise drug delivery

Combining non-invasive brain stimulation and robotic rehabilitation improves motor recovery in mouse stroke model

Chickening out – why some birds fear novelty

Gene Brown, MD, RPh, announced as President of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and its Foundation

Study links wind-blown dust from receding Salton Sea to reduced lung function in area children

Multidisciplinary study finds estrogen could aid in therapies for progressive multiple sclerosis

Final day of scientific sessions reveals critical insights for clinical practice at AAO-HNSF Annual Meeting and OTO EXPO

Social adversity and triple-negative breast cancer incidence among black women

Rapid vs standard induction to injectable extended-release buprenorphine

Galvanizing blood vessel cells to expand for organ transplantation

Common hospice medications linked to higher risk of death in people with dementia

SNU researchers develop innovative heating and cooling technology using ‘a single material’ to stay cool in summer and warm in winter without electricity

SNU researchers outline a roadmap for next-generation 2D semiconductor 'gate stack' technology

The fundamental traditional Chinese medicine constitution theory serves as a crucial basis for the development and application of food and medicine homology products

Outfoxed: New research reveals Australia’s rapid red fox invasion

SwRI’s Dr. Chris Thomas named AIAA Associate Fellow

National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) funding for research on academic advising experiences of Division I Black/African American student-athletes at minority serving institutions

Johri developing artificial intelligence literacy among undergraduate engineering and technology students

Boston Children’s receives a $35 million donation to accelerate development of therapeutic options for children with brain disorders through the Rosamund Stone Zander and Hansjoerg Wyss Translational

Quantum crystals offer a blueprint for the future of computing and chemistry

Looking beyond speech recognition to evaluate cochlear implants

Tracking infectious disease spread via commuting pattern data

Underweight children cost the NHS as much per child as children with obesity, Oxford study finds.

Wetland plant-fungus combo cleans up ‘forever chemicals’ in a pilot study

Traditional Chinese medicine combined with peginterferon α-2b in chronic hepatitis B

APS and SPR honor Dr. Wendy K. Chung with the 2026 Mary Ellen Avery Neonatal Research Award

The Gabriella Miller Kids First Data Resource Center (Kids First DRC) has launched the Variant Workbench

Yeast survives Martian conditions

Calcium could be key to solving stability issues in sodium-ion batteries

Can smoother surfaces prevent hydrogen embrittlement?

[Press-News.org] Sensing robot healthcare helpers being developed at SFU
The current pandemic highlights how remote healthcare robots currently being developed at SFU could be beneficial in the future