The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, or EPSRC, has once again shown their interest and support in robotics by funding a project called the RoboPatient.
Generally, when one complains of stomach pain or a similar condition, a doctor examines the abdominal area by touching and probing to give a proper diagnosis. They push on the stomach with their fingers in certain positions that they change, they apply varying amount of pressure, and they do some tapping action. According to one of the researchers, Dr. Thrishantha Nanayakkara, without actual practice on real patients, medical students cannot learn these different techniques.
Researchers at Imperial College London have launched a project at the beginning of the month to solve this problem. The team has developed a prototype of their project using layers of silicone that resembled the soft tissue of humans. They made the prototype so that it simulated some conditions of having swollen organs and hard nodules. As pressure is applied to the robotic patient, sensors embedded in its mock organs detected and recorded this information along with how long the testing was done before the diagnosis. The instruments were also installed with display to show the data gathered, which will help the students compare and hopefully improve their techniques. Recorded information will also be used in statistical analysis to identify more effective techniques in diagnosis.
To assess the effectiveness of the project, experts in the field will first diagnose the conditions of the RoboPatient. This will establish a metric for the project. Then, students will be asked to practice their diagnosis techniques on the RoboPatient.
The team also plans to incorporate augmented reality in the project so that facial expressions can be shown by the RoboPatient as it "feels pain". They believe that this will help the students find methods on how to make the patient more comfortable. "We think this will make training more robust and facilitate students to quickly adapt to real patients," explains Dr. Nanayakkara.
Right now, the researchers are looking to work with associates for the project, as they plan to launch the initial version of the technique in the clinical setup by the end of 2020.
