Study: Remote robot assistance makes ICU docs happy

Nearly 90 percent of physicians who use rolling robots to remotely treat patients in the ICU do so without additional compensation—yet a strong majority, 66 percent, consider the technology a “blessing.” None perceive such remote presence as a pure burden and, while 33 percent see it as a “mixed blessing and burden,” fully 100 percent intend to continue using it.

That’s according to a new study on utilization of remote-presence robots in the ICU published in the current issue of Telemedicine and e-Health.

Combining an online survey of physicians with data obtained from U.S. facilities using remote-presence robots in the ICU, the study’s authors evaluated more than 10,000 “robot activations” involving 56 robots deployed in 25 ICUs as of 2010, according to the article.

They found that the technology is active in various patterns of utilization that, considered as a whole, add up to a replication of normal ICU workflow.

Among the key findings from the physician survey: 

• 80 percent of responding physicians said they had conducted robotic-care visits from their homes.
• For the most part, remote presence physicians are located in larger cities, and remote care is provided in cities that are at least midsized.
• Two-thirds of respondents provide service to only one ICU, but another combined 26 percent provide coverage to two or three ICUs.
• Of primary sites where remote critical care services are delivered, a small majority are community facilities and some 46.6 percent are academic medical centers.
• Only three facilities were identified as critical access hospitals while, functionally, the vast majority of the ICUs were described as mixed medical-surgical.

“It is surprising that very few ‘critical access’ hospitals are covered,” wrote the authors in their conclusion. “The time-utilization pattern seems to mimic the natural ebb and flow of routine on-site activities of an ICU, suggesting that the robotic remote presence technology is supplementing typical day-to-day ICU activities.”

In a disclosure statement, the study’s five co-authors note that three are full-time administrative employees of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based InTouch Health, the manufacturer of remote-presence robots that recently won FDA approval for expanded utilization of its devices in acute-care environments.

The study is available online.