Robots are a favorite topic here at Telecare Aware, if you haven’t noticed 
- Down the river from Ed. Donna is the first, to our knowledge, automated pharmacy, which is at NYU’s Langone Medical Center. It utilizes advanced robotic equipment to sort and dispense medications, doing the work automatically with 99.99% accuracy in less than 30 minutes. The process is dependent on e-prescribing of course, and is checked by both the pharmacist at the outset and the nurse before dispensing. TMCnet.
- Gecko Systems’s CEO was interviewed on their eldercare CareBot by Clare Walker for BBC Radio 4’s ‘You and Yours’ consumer program on 19 Nov (Robotics Wire), but CareBot unfortunately was the ‘face on the cutting room floor’ at least for now. ‘Technology and Care’ had more of the usual suspects (see Chapter 3): the Paro cuddly (or strange) baby seal, the Bath Institute of Medical Engineering and the Cooking Minder, GE Healthcare (John Dineen on QuietCare and Intel Health Guide, joint venture soon to be named). On the Gecko Systems’ website are two videos of CareBot in use.
- Robo-bathing: the Georgia Institute of Technology is developing a robot that can assist in washing patients in bed. See videos of Cody cleaning its designer on enGadget. And just for fun, see Cody’s googly-eyed brother Simon, who has voice and face recognition and is a lot more useful around the house (but can’t cook a turkey!)
Steve and I wish our American readers a very happy and culinarily delightful Thanksgiving holiday, with safe travels that are non-irradiated and non-frisked. (From the US side we will be on a ‘news diet’ until next week.)