The primary goal of the project is to improve lower the mortality rate in future outbreaks of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) by improving the quality of care delivered by health care workers in the field. We will do this by analyzing current care procedures, determining what can be effectively automated and/or performed by a robot system, and then implementing, testing, and evaluating this automation. The communities most impacted by the work in this proposal will be those suffering from EVD during the next outbreak where some of the technology developed .here is deployed. A secondary community is the health care providers, such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, with whom we will collaborate on this work. The secondary goal of this project is to develop a methodology and approach for introducing robotics and automation into public health care settings, with a focus on improving overall patient outcomes. Although this specific work in this proposal addresses EVD, much of what we learn will be applicable to a wide variety of public health care settings.
The specific aims of this proposal are:
Aim 1 : Build mathematical models of MSF procedures for the care of patients with Ebola Aim 2: Identify high-value tasks and subtasks most suitable for automation Aim 3: Automate selected tasks and sub-tasks, and compare overall system performance
NIBIB: Integrates engineering with the life sciences to improve the treatment of disease, and includes studies to assess the effectiveness of new processes incorporating robotic devices. NICDH: Improve effectiveness of rehabilitation treatments for people with disabilities by reducing mundane workload burden on health care providers through automation, allowing them to focus on patients. NINOS: Improve stroke rehabilitation through automated reminders and compliance-checking, and also free up health care providers from mundane tasks, to spend more time with patients.
