The Eurecat technology centre and Hospital Sant Joan de Déu have designed a desktop social robot to help paediatric palliative patients at home. It enables remote monitoring of the patient’s symptoms and streamlines communication between professionals and the family.
The Jana robot consists of a structure built with 3D printing and a tablet connected to a medical app which allows caregivers to interact with it.
The innovation is currently being tested for six months in a pilot clinical study led by Hospital Sant Joan de Déu involving ten robots installed in the homes of paediatric patients with severe neurological diseases and palliative care to assess whether the remote monitoring solutions are user-friendly and how satisfied families and healthcare professionals are with them.
The innovation allows “natural and gamified communication of users with the robot which increases adherence and simplifies monitoring in medical processes,” says Daniel Serrano, director of Eurecat’s Robotics and Automation Unit.
Interaction between robots and patients has been enhanced “by furnishing the robot with facial expressions and body movements in a way that enables it to trigger microbehaviours in specific situations in coordination with the medical app and the conversation with the user,” notes Magí Dalmau, head of the Cognitive Robotics Line at Eurecat’s Robotics and Automation Unit.
The Jana robot “has a shape that resembles a person’s body to foster empathy and bonding with the user, make it easier to use and ensure its safety and stability,” points out Federica Loizzo, a researcher in Eurecat’s Robotics and Automation Unit.
It has also been designed bearing in mind the desktop robots available on the market as an easily accessible and scalable healthcare solution.
