Robotic nurses serve food, medicines to coronavirus patients in Chennai hospital
A hospital in Chennai has brought in robots to serve food and medicines to the coronavirus patients, setting an exemplar on how technology can be put to use in the direst circumstances. The move is aimed at reducing the risk of infection for nurses.
On Friday, Tamil Nadu Health Minister C. Vijayabhaskar visited the Stanley Hospital and checked the functions of 'robotic nurses' deployed in corona wards. He said the robotic nurses can serve food and medicine to COVID-19 patients which would limit the direct contact of doctors/nurses with the patients and reduce the risk of infection.
Earlier this month, a field hospital staffed with 14 robots opened in the Hongshan Sports Center in China's Wuhan where the pandemic began. The robots, supplied by Beijing-based robotics company CloudMinds, can clean and disinfect, deliver medicine to patients and measure their temperature.
In Jaipur, the Sawai Man Singh Government Hospital is conducting a series of trials on a humanoid robot to check if it can be pressed into service for delivering medicines and food to the coronavirus patients. A Kerala-based startup, Asimov Robotics, has developed a three-wheeled robot that it says can be used to assist patients in isolation wards.
