Robodoc makes rounds at Johns Hopkins, allows doctoring at a distance

Some medical ethicists fear that robots will make medicine impersonal.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Sept. 1, 2003.

This doctor can't shake a patient's hand, take a pulse or listen to a heartbeat.

But he is going on rounds at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Informally, he's known as Dr. Robot. Officially, he is called the Companion, an armless robot that rolls into a patient's room, allowing an off-site physician to see and talk with a patient by using an Internet hookup, a mounted camera and screen that shows the doctor's face.

"It looks like a giant vacuum cleaner with a flat-screen monitor on it. When it comes into the room, patients laugh," said Louis Kavoussi, MD, a professor of urology at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "If the door is closed, you have to have a nurse open it for you."

Despite its appearance, the robot is no laughing matter. Johns Hopkins is testing it as a new high-tech way to connect physicians with patients.

For several years, physicians have been using robotics in surgery. Now they are going a step further, experimenting with remote-presence robots that interact with patients when a physician is not physically present.

Proponents say such robots are intended to augment regular interactions between doctors and patients. The robot is used when it's not possible or practical for the doctor to see a patient in person, Dr. Kavoussi said.

But some ethicists worry that this new breed of robots will do just the opposite, making medicine less personal and putting greater stress on the physician-patient relationship.