An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

The Min­istry of Health (MOH) has re­ceived eight health ser­vice ro­bots from the In­di­an Gov­ern­ment at a cost of US $1 mil­lion as part of the on­go­ing move to digi­tise the health sec­tor.

Ti­tled Bring­ing High and Low Tech­nol­o­gy (HALT), the col­lab­o­ra­tive part­ner­ship, which com­menced in Sep­tem­ber 2021 un­der the In­dia-UNDP Fund by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO), fea­tures two dis­in­fec­tion ro­bots and six hu­manoid ro­bots.

Dur­ing the han­dover cer­e­mo­ny at the MOH, Queen’s Park East, yes­ter­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said T&T was firm­ly com­mit­ted to in­te­grat­ing ro­bot­ics and AI tech­nol­o­gy in­to the health­care sys­tem.

He said, “Dig­i­tal so­lu­tions, in­clud­ing AI and ro­bot­ics, are the dri­ving force of med­ical prac­tice and in­no­va­tion. In light of this, the min­istry has ac­cel­er­at­ed its on­go­ing ef­forts to digi­tise the pub­lic health­care sys­tem.”

Deyals­ingh said they were mov­ing to in­te­grate sev­er­al com­po­nents of the pub­lic health sys­tem, such as phar­ma­cies, lab­o­ra­to­ries, and the PAC sys­tem, in­to one pa­per­less sys­tem.

The Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal is set to get two hu­manoid and one dis­in­fec­tion ro­bot; Scar­bor­ough Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal has been as­signed one hu­manoid and one dis­in­fec­tion ro­bot; the Cou­va and Point Fortin hos­pi­tals will get one hu­manoid ro­bot each. The Me­chan­i­cal En­gi­neer­ing, Man­u­fac­tur­ing, and En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­part­ment, Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T (UTT), will get one hu­manoid ro­bot to help in fur­ther­ing ca­pac­i­ty and ad­dress­ing is­sues that may arise.

PA­HO/WHO rep­re­sen­ta­tive for T&T and the six Dutch Caribbean Is­lands, Dr Gabriel Vi­vas Francesconi, re­vealed the ro­bots were in­tro­duced in­to the health sys­tem in Rwan­da, Africa, in 2020.

He said they had proven to be suc­cess­ful both in the hos­pi­tals and air­ports where they had been placed and had played a vi­tal role in the screen­ing of both pas­sen­gers and pa­tients dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

He said they were placed in the most in­fec­tious wards and had con­duct­ed tem­per­a­ture screen­ing, record­ed vi­tal signs, de­liv­ered me­dia mes­sages, and col­lect­ed da­ta, there­by re­duc­ing ex­po­sure by staff to the virus.

Francesconi said, “It is an­tic­i­pat­ed that the in­tro­duc­tion of high tech­nol­o­gy health ser­vices ro­bots will be a sig­nif­i­cant part of the tech­no­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion of the health sec­tor in T&T.”

UTT pres­i­dent, Prof Prakash Per­sad as­sured that all sites where the ro­bots would be placed had been vis­it­ed to as­sess their suit­abil­i­ty and that MOH staff had been trained in the pro­gram­ming and op­er­a­tion of the de­vices.

He said over 30 years of re­search had been in­vest­ed in the ro­bot­ic tech­nol­o­gy, which he de­scribed as a win-win for UTT and the MOH.

Per­sad said, “We are ful­ly pre­pared to fur­ther col­lab­o­rate on the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and de­vel­op­ment of AI-based di­ag­nos­tic tools to fur­ther en­hance health care de­liv­ery here in the re­gion.”