Research Article
Iris: A Low-Cost Telemedicine Robot to Support Healthcare Safety and Equity During a Pandemic
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.1007/978-3-030-99194-4_9, author={Sachiko Matsumoto and Sanika Moharana and Nimisha Devanagondi and Leslie C. Oyama and Laurel D. Riek}, title={Iris: A Low-Cost Telemedicine Robot to Support Healthcare Safety and Equity During a Pandemic}, proceedings={Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare. 15th EAI International Conference, Pervasive Health 2021, Virtual Event, December 6-8, 2021, Proceedings}, proceedings_a={PERVASIVEHEALTH}, year={2022}, month={3}, keywords={Healthcare Robotics Telemedicine Healthcare management Human robot interaction Emergency medicine}, doi={10.1007/978-3-030-99194-4_9} }- Sachiko Matsumoto
Sanika Moharana
Nimisha Devanagondi
Leslie C. Oyama
Laurel D. Riek
Year: 2022
Iris: A Low-Cost Telemedicine Robot to Support Healthcare Safety and Equity During a Pandemic
PERVASIVEHEALTH
Springer
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-99194-4_9
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated problems of already overwhelmed healthcare ecosystems. The pandemic worsened long-standing health disparities and increased stress and risk of infection for frontline healthcare workers (HCWs). Telemedical robots offer great potential to both improve HCW safety and patient access to high-quality care, however, most of these systems are prohibitively expensive for under-resourced healthcare organizations, and difficult to use. In this paper, we introduceIris, a low-cost, open hardware/open software telemedical robot platform. We co-designedIriswith front-line HCWs to be usable, accessible, robust, and well-situated within the emergency medicine (EM) ecosystem. We testedIriswith 15 EM physicians, who reported high usability, and provided detailed feedback critical to situating the robot within a range of EM care delivery contexts, including under-resourced ones. Based on these findings, we present a series of concrete design suggestions for those interested in building and deploying similar systems. We hope this will inspire future work both in the current pandemic and beyond.
