Medical College Develops Fully-Equipped Telemedical Drone

The first fully-equipped medical multirotor drone with telemedicine capability is the newest innovation from Dr. Italo Subbarao, an associate dean and associate professor at the William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and Guy Paul Cooper Jr., a third-year Carey medical student from Wheaton, Illinois. Subbarao and Cooper have been working on the project, called Healthcare Integrated Rescue Operations (HiRO), since 2014. HiRO is a follow-up to the team's previous project, an analysis of the use of Twitter during the February 2013 Hattiesburg tornado and an application of the social network's usefulness to other crisis situations. Their findings from the Twitter project were published in June in PLOS Currents: Disasters, a peer-reviewed scientific journal, and then shared internationally. According to Subbarao, the HiRO prototype, a modified DJI S1000+ drone, is capable of carrying an advanced, 20-pound telemedical kit and delivering it to someone in need of medical attention in areas where emergency personnel may not be able to reach quickly. Subbarao also notes that the drone can be used to reach areas that health rescue personnel may not want to enter immediately, such as a suspected Ebola outbreak in a third-world country. "The purpose of the project is to get timely life-saving medications, vaccines and equipment to victims in a disaster area or in a remote location through the use of GPS," said Subbarao. A hypothetical situation Subbarao env...
Source: JEMS Special Topics - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: General News Equipment & Gear Technology Source Type: news