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RP-7 Robot Supports Trauma Care Specialists

U of Miami Miller School of Medicine at Jackson Memorial’s Ryder’s Trauma Center has partnered with the US Army to research the effectiveness of RP-7® in the trauma environment. Funded by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC)—an organization under the US Army Medical Research & Materiel Command, Fort Detrick, Maryland—the research team will conduct a 12-month clinical trial to study the usability and clinical effectiveness of this technology in trauma care. Specifically, attending specialty physicians at Ryder Trauma Center will remotely support their on-site team and care of patients in Ryder’s resuscitation, trauma OR and trauma ICU as part of their research. The US Army is sponsoring this research in hopes to learn whether or not the RP-7 may have applicability in trauma care on the battlefield. Dr. Jeffrey Augenstein, Professor of Surgery and Director of the Ryder Trauma Center, believes that this technology could virtually bring world class trauma physicians to the battlefield to support and mentor deployed military physicians who are treating injured soldiers.
The RP-7 provides an advanced real-time audio-video telecommunications platform that would connect trauma surgeons and intensive care physicians—from centers of excellence based in the US—with military doctors in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. These specialists would be able to offer expert consultation to military providers who are in the midst of treating patients in extremely adverse conditions. LTC Donald Robinson, Director of the Army Trauma Training Center at Ryder and a co-investigator in the research study said this technology may be useful in providing military medical providers with access to other medical experts—no matter their location—to further enhance the medical care of wounded warriors.

It is expected that research findings will be reported in 2009.