Using a computer in Germany, Partho P. Sengupta, MD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, performed a robot-assisted ultrasound examination on a person in Boston.
For the study, investigators tested the use of a small, lightweight robotic-arm with built-in ultrasound technology stationed in Boston and connected to a personal computer with a low-bandwidth Internet connection in Munich, Germany. The robotic ultrasound exam of a persons carotid artery in their neck was completed in just four minutes.
"Our first-in-man experiment shows long-distance, telerobotic ultrasound examinations over standard internet are possible," said Sengupta, director of Cardiac Ultrasound Research at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Chair of the New Technology Task Force at the American Society of Echocardiography. "This feasibility and time-efficiency of long-distance, telerobotic ultrasound may help expand the role of imagers to care for patients online virtually lending a true 'helping hand' remotely and providing a patients care team expert guidance."
In a separate effort, Kurt Boman, MD, demonstrated how combining a cardiologists video e-consultation with a remote robot-assisted echocardiogram test could dramatically reduce the waiting time for a diagnosis, specifically for those in rural communities far from the hospital. Boman, of Umeå University in Sweden, was working in collaboration with Mount Sinai.
For this research, Boman's team randomized half their study patients to remote consultation and the other half to standard of care referral to the hospital. Remote consultation and the robotic echocardiogram exam were conducted on the same day of a patients visit to their local primary healthcare center located more than 100 miles away from the hospital.
They found that the remote consultation cut the total diagnostic process time from 114 to 27 days and the wait time for obtaining a specialist consultation was reduced from 86 to 12 days, with 95% of remote consult patients claiming remote consult to be a superior strategy.
"The two studies give us a glimpse of what to expect in the near future, a patient-friendly imaging technology at your doorstep," says Jagat Narula, MD, PhD, the senior author of both research studies who serves as the Director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Center and Associate Dean of Global Research at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Both studies—Feasibility of Intercity and Trans-Atlantic Telerobotic Remote Ultrasound and Robot-Assisted Remote Echocardiographic Examination and†Teleconsultation, respectively—appear in the August issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology-Imaging.
