“Robot” to Help during COVID-19 Screening at Bengaluru Hospital

In Bengaluru, Fortis Hospital has introduced Mitra Robot for COVID-19 screening with a concern to protect the health care workers and to increase the speed of the screening process. This initiative has been taken to screen each and every visitor including doctors, nurses, medical and non-medical staff entering the hospital.

The robot screens the visitor for symptoms of COVID-19 such as fever, cough and cold. Moreover, the robot interact using facial and speech recognition contextual help and autonomous navigation.

Dr. Manish Mattoo, Zonal Director, Fortis Hospitals, Bengaluru has said “The high infection rates among health care workers across the world have hampered efforts to tackle COVID-19 pandemic that prompted us to consider robotic screening.”

He also said that the hospital is screening patients, their attendees and staff at the entrance of the hospital to ensure that no one with the symptoms of COVID-19 is entering into the hospital.

This kind of initiative will help health care workers for maintaining a safe distance from each other during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in the country. The hospital stated that the robotic screening will be completed in two stages.

The first robot is placed at the entrance of the hospital to conduct basic screening that includes temperature check of the individual and followed by a few questions on symptoms including cough and cold of COVID-19.

If the temperature of the person is normal and has no signs of cough and cold, the first robot prints an entry pass that mentions screening result as PASS along with the name and photo of the person. On the other hand, in case, if an individual has high temperature and confirms about signs of cough and cold to the robot, it will print the screening result as FAIL.

If the screening result is Fail, the person will be guided to the next robot inside the hospital and this second robot will guide the person along to the flu clinic that will allow the doctor to further diagnose the person without any physical contact.