I love Healthcare Robots, so I can't wait for to host tomorrow's chat. Details:
— John Lynn ()
Mr. RIMP ( on Twitter & Youtube) is all growed up! And hosting a #HITsm tweetchat all by hisself: Healthcare Robots! #HITsm, from noon to 1PM, EST, is an hour long. Dear little Mr. R put together an hour-long robot-themed mixtape, with lots of music videos about robots! So open two browsers, one for Twitter and the other for this post, and exactly at noon EST (so you all are listening to the same songs at the same time), start playing Mr. R’s mixtape! And, please, comment, positively, or negatively, about the music videos during #HITsm!
From ’s blog post:
We’re excited to share the topic and questions for this week’s #HITsm chat happening Friday, 2/3 at Noon ET (9 AM PT). This week’s chat will be hosted by Mr RIMP (, Robot-In-My-Pocket), mascot of the first ever #HIMSS17 Innovation Makerspace! (Booth 7785) (with assistance from ) We’ll be discussing the topic “Healthcare Robots!” and so it seems appropriate to have a robot hosting the chat….
In a first, #HIMSS17 has a #makerspace (Booth 7785), in the HIMSS17 Innovation Zone. It has robots! They are rudimentary, but educational and fun. One of those robots is , for Robot-In-My-Pocket. Here is an YouTube interview with . As you can tell, little Mr. R. has a bit of an attitude. He also wrote the questions below and will moderate tweets about them during the #HITsm tweetchat.
From the recent How medical robots will change healthcare (), there are three main areas of robotic health:
1. Direct patient care robots: surgical robots (used for performing clinical procedures), exoskeletons (for bionic extensions of self like the Ekso suit), and prosthetics (replacing lost limbs). Over 500 people a day loses a limb in America with 2 million Americans living with limb loss according to the CDC.
2. Indirect patient care robots: pharmacy robots (streamlining automation, autonomous robots for inventory control reducing labor costs), delivery robots (providing medical goods throughout a hospital autonomously), and disinfection robots (interacting with people with known infectious diseases such as healthcare-associated infections or HAIs).
3. Home healthcare robots: robotic telepresence solutions (addressing the aging population with robotic assistance).
Before the #HITsm tweetchat I hope you’ll watch Robot & Frank, about a household robot and an increasingly infirm retiree (86% on Rotten Tomatoes, available on YouTube, Amazon, Itunes, Vudu, and Google for $2.99) I’ll also note a subcategory to the direct care robots: pediatric therapy robots. Consider, for example, New Friends 2016, The Second International Conference on Social Robots in Therapy and Education. I, Mr. RIMP, have a special interest in this area.
Join us as we discuss Healthcare Robots during the February 3rd #HITsm chat. Here are the questions we’ll discuss:
T1: What is your favorite robot movie? Why? How many years in the future would you guess it will take to achieve similar robots? #HITsm
T2: Robots promise to replace a lot of human labor. Cost-wise, humanity-wise, will this be more good than bad, or more bad than good? #HITsm
T3: Have you played with, or observed any “toy” robots. Impressed? Not impressed? Why? #HITsm
T4: IMO, “someday” normal, everyday people will be able design and program their own robots. What kind of robot would you design for healthcare? #HITsm
T5: Robots and workflow? Connections? Think about healthcare robots working *together* with healthcare workers. What are potential implications? #HITsm
Bonus: Isn’t (Robot-In-My-Pocket) the cutest, funniest, little, robot you’ve ever seen? Any suggestions for the next version (V.4) of me? #HITsm