by
Lauren Dubinsky, Senior Reporter | November 13, 2015
From the November 2015 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Robotic portable X-rays
“It’s a little bit science fiction, because there are some practical difficulties to figure out, but you can imagine in the not-so-distant future automatic guided mobile X-ray machines that dispatch themselves from room to room based on some scheduling algorithm,” says Hill.
GE is currently working on a high-end interventional system that is automatically guided by robotic technology. Since hospitals are already using robotic technology to deliver supplies within the hospital, Hill believes that in the coming years robotic portable X-ray systems will also make their way into the clinical arena.
The only thing standing in the way is how to incorporate it into the workflow of the hospitals. “Figuring out how to integrate that into a clinical environment, with all of the people and the urgency and the chaos that goes on in the clinical environment, I think that’s probably as big a challenge as making a mobile that can drive itself around,” says Hill.
In addition, some hospitals might not want a portable X-ray that drives itself. The University of Vermont Medical Center’s Kittredge believes that it would diminish the personal side of health care. “I’m a little old school — I like to have hands on,” she says. “The robotics would not interest me now.” Even if portable X-rays don’t become robots, the technology has still come a long way in recent years. They can now image any patient and any body part, run on lithium-ion batteries, include many of the capabilities of fixed room systems and will be able to do even more in the near future.
Back to HCB News
